Summary of 23 Things

I am very excited to have all of my "The 23 Things" completed. When I first saw all of the "The 23 Things" it looked like so much work. It did turn out to be a lot of work, but I also learned so much about what web 2.0 can do.

There are so many amazing tools on the internet that I had no idea existed before doing “The 23 Thing”. I really enjoyed all of the things I did, but I did find it overwhelming to learn about so many web tools that now I just hope I can remember everything for future use.

I think it is really important for educators to be aware of technology and to embrace it in their classrooms. Children today are growing up in a world were they are constantly surrounded by technology, so if teachers do not incorporate technology as well, they will miss out on opportunities to reach students through methods that they can relate to.

I think some people are afraid of all of the web tools and think they are too hard to use. I think if everyone would just stop being afraid of the unknown they too could discover all of the neat things you can do. I think for teachers, it is even more important for someone who is afraid of learning about the tools to conquer their fears, because there are so many great tools that can be used to enhance the learning experience in the classroom.

With all of the tools on web 2.0, it has never been easier to connect the real world to lessons taught in the classroom. In addition, collaboration with others also allows teachers to learn from each other and share ideas in real time.

Thing # 23

Creative Commons is such a great resource for educators. I have already used Creative Commons several times over the course of this semester. Creative Commons make finding videos, music, and images for projects much easier. As a teacher I will use Creative Commons. I have already used it for pictures for two different power points and a video for my copyright tutorial.

It is very important for a teacher to set a good example for students on copyright, so although it can be frustrating to not use something that you think is great because you do not have permission, having permission is very important. Creative commons is great because it gives teachers a place to look for things to use, and with Creative Commons they can easily check for permission to use what they find.

Thing # 22

The Educational Podcast Directory was user friendly and had a large variety of podcasts available that were are divided into categories. If the categories were divided into specific podcasts for grades,then i would make them easier to find. The sections they do have are "student and class podcasts” and podcasts by “subject specific podcasts”.

Podcast Alley was also user friendly to search for podcasts, but they two were not divieded into subject grades. There is a search box, so you can search for specific podcasts or you can go under genre. Podcast Alley has over 2,000 podcasts for education, but since they are all under the same label it would take some time to find one you are interested in lisenting to.

The podcast that I listened to was a podcast for GRE test preparation. The podcast reviewed vocabulary, specifically word meaning,and synonyms and antonyms of each word. Although I think this could be a helpful podcast for someone who is studing for their test, it is not what I thought it was going to be, but since they are not labeled well it is hard to tell.

Learn Out Loud seemed to be more for selling podcasts, I did not find any free podcast of interest to me.

Podcast are a great tool for a classroom. I had the opportunity to make a podcast with a first grade class this year. I did a lesson on adjectives for the podcasts. The students had so much more fun with adjectives than they usually do because they new they were being recorded. The students were so excited to hear themselves on the podcast, that during the lesson they were very attentive and contributed to the lesson because they wanted to hear their voices on the podcast.

Thing # 21

I had a lot of fun with Animoto and I do plan to use this site again. My pictures are from a trip my husband and I took to San Diego. When I was making my video I just kept thinking off all of the other pictures I would like to make videos of too. I think this is a great way to share photos with other people. I think it is really neat how the video looks like it is professionally done, and it take so little time to do. It would be great if you could make longer videos for free, but the price for longer videos is very reasonable. I also like how easy it is to post videos to facebook or to e-mail them to friends.

In the classroom Animoto could be used by students and teachers as a way to present anything that they have taken photos of, because the site is so quick and easy to use. Teachers could take picutres of field trips and make a video of pictures and send it to the students parents.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Thing # 20

I think you Tube is a great website. In the past I had only used this site to watch fun videos, but this semeter I have learned that there is a lot more to you Tube than just funny videos. There are so many fun videos, but there are also a lot of great educational videos as well. You can learn a lot from you Tube videos, there really is a video for everything. I watched a video on the Ipad and now I want one!

In addition to all of the videos there are to watch, you can also make your own videos and share what you know with others. This could be a great tool for a teacher to make a video for the class that could be used for other classes and shared with other teachers.

The two videos that I selected for my blog are both videos are for kindergarten and first grade students who are learning the alphabet. I think fun videos like these help younger students learn. When I start teaching I will utilize you Tube for videos that go along with class lesssons.

Thing # 19

In this activity I learned that there are other social network sites besides facebook and myspace. Facebook and Linked In were the only two online communities are that I was a member of before this activity. I am now a member of Gather, Ning and Teacher Pop..

On Ning I really like the Classroom 2.0 and The Future of Education. I also like how with Ning you can create your own site for others to follow.

Gather is interesting; it feels that it is geared towards older adults. It allows you to choose an interest and to choose an age group of people who you would like to share your interest with. It is more than just a social network site, allowing you to publish work and to comment on work published.

I think Teacher Pop is neat, and it allows everyone from the class a place to share information they have learned as we learn new things in school and as we all venture out and start teaching. I added the Teacher pop badge to my facebook and to my blog.

Another new site that I found that I like is flixster http://www.flixster.com/ . I love watching movies but I really do not like sitting through bad movies, so I like how on this site there are lot of movie reviews from different people. If someone is looking to make new friends then going to a site where you can look for someone who also is going to have the same interest, can make it easier to make new friends online.

There are so many different social gathering sites that it would be impossible to follow all of them, but it is nice to have so many choices.

Thing # 19-Teacher Pop Badge

Visit TeacherPop

Thing # 18

I have had a facebook page for awhile, and I love how easy and fun it is to stay in touch with friends. I also started a myspace page, but I found that more of my friends were on facebook, so that is where I started spending all of my time. I think it is really fun how easy it is to talk to all or just one of your friends and that you can find people who you may have lost contact with, or even make new friends through other friends. The one disadvantage to facebook is that it can be easy to waste a lot of time unintentionally, looking at pictures and other updates of your friends. One thing that I dislike about facebook is that comments of friends, of your friends, show up. This could be interesting if all of my friends were teachers and I could learn from other comments, but since for me facebook it is just friends talking about personal things, I don’t like having all of the comments from everyone show up.

One feature that I like about myspace are all of the different options for designing you’re your own homepage. One thing that I do not like about myspace is that I find that there are more advertisements on this site that are very hard to ignore. I find facebook to be more user friendly, but if I spent as much time on myspace that I have on facebook I might find that they are equally easy to use.

I think it is important for educators to know about social network sites because they can be a very valuable tool for networking with other teachers. Facebook and myspace are both very user friendly sites and are an easy way to stay in contact with other teachers, and to meet new teachers, through the teachers you have as friends. I am not sure that either site would have a specific need in the classroom; however, both sites are an excellent tool that students could use to talk to each other about questions for each other or things they want to share about school.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1179973861&ref=profile

Thing # 17

For Thing number 17, I explored Del.icio.us. I really like the site, and I think it is has a lot of great features. One feature that I really enjoyed was that you can search through items tagged by anyone; this can be a great way to narrow your search on a topic, or to just view what has been selected as the most popular articles on a specific subject. Another great feature of Del.icio.us is that you do not have to be on your computer to access your bookmarked list, there have been so many times when I want to go to a webpage, but since I did not memorize the address, I could not access the different sites unless I was on my computer. It also is a great way to keep track of websites, I know from just this class alone, there are so many websites that I put on my favorites list that now I can never find anything I am looking for! I think social bookmarking sites can provide many benefits to educators and students too. Teachers can take advantage of social book marking sites by using them as a collaboration tool with other teachers, or as a collaboration tool for students when working on projects.

Thing # 16

For my homepage I choose igoogle, it was appealing to me because it was so easy to you and I like that you can customize and organize your homepage with the information that you want. I will consider using igoogle as my permanent homepage. For making my to do list, I really like the Ta Da List Account. I am a big list maker and I loved that you can type your list, move your listed items around and e-mail it to someone. I did not like the Remember the Milk website, this site seemed to be more work than it was worth to make a list. In exploring the list of tools for organization and productivity I found several neat tools and a few that I feel would be more work than they are helpful. Jott has a lot of neat features, such as you can get voicemails in the form of an e-mail or text, as well as Jott assistant is a cool tool to have for things that you think of while you are somewhere that you can not write something down, however, it would still just leave what you need to do on different text messages. I personally do not feel that my life is so busy that I would have a need for Jott. I really like the Tiny Url, it is a feature that would be great for citing sources, because some URL addresses are so long. Engrade is a great resource for teachers, allowing parents and students to get immediate feedback for how the student is doing in class. I also like Gradefix, I think it is a great program to help younger students learn how to manage their time.

Thing # 15

I had no idea before Thing # 15 what a Wiki was, before I had only seen the work Wiki a few times when I googled a definition of a word. I think Wikis’ are really neat. I found it interesting how easy it is to share information and that anyone can make alterations on anyone elses work. A Wiki could be a great collaboration tool for students in a classroom. It would be a very valuable way for students to communicate with each other outside of the classroom and build on each others ideas. In addition, a teacher could use a Wiki as a way to have an interactive lesson online. For example a student could write an answer to a question, and then the student could write the next question for their classmate. It would be a lesson that would go beyond just answering questions, and give them an opportunity to have more in-depth thoughts about the lesson they are learning.