The End?

My favorite thing to discover was tadalist.com. I am always carrying around three or four to do lists and now I can keep them all online and they are accessible from any computer with Internet access. I love being able to walk in to work or the library and have everything right in front of me. As far as my learning goals go I think that participating in the 23 things has made me want to keep exploring all the free things out there to help me in my career. One thing that surprised me was that I do enjoy blogging and I enjoy reading other blogs about things that are important to me. Some of the things I have learned will allow me to run a classroom that keeps my students engaged and waiting to see what I am going to do next. I will keep up with some of the different web 2.0 blog sites and information sites we have explored this semester. Thanks to this learning experience I am making a resolution to start a new blog and keep it updated regularly. I want to use this new blog to discuss the life lessons I learn as I hit the real world full speed ahead.

Thing 23

All the pictures above show that the 23 things activity has been created by someone else who allows for modifications. I do not plan to use creative commons much in my classroom. I have enjoyed learning about this subject and I am glad to know there are laws out there to help teachers do their jobs more efficiently.

Thing 22

Games for class

I tried liveBinders and found them annoying. It would take a long time to build up the binders to the magnitude that would make them useful in the classroom. The titles of my binders are Games for class, Musical Theatre History, Stage Make-up. I can see the usefulness of the binders to make things more shareable with my class. I might even use the binders if I needed filler games some days. I just do not have the time to dedicate to making these binders as diverse as I would need to make them a staple in my classroom.

Thing 21

Help me

I loved using animoto.com. I had a blast creating my video clip. I do not really see the educational value of it at this point but I guess it could happen. Anyway, I had a hard time with the audio playing on the computer I created the video on so I went to another computer and it played just fine. I hope that an educational use can be found for this technology but until then I think this is one thing I must file away. I was not able to get the video embedded, all I could do was link it in with the blogger button.

Thing 20

As someone who was homeschooled I found this video funny. I think youtube can be useful in many ways. I will use youtube when it becomes helpful in my classroom. I enjoy looking for videos that make me and others think. I do think that there are some things on youtube that are not worth my time but that is something everyone must decide for themselves. I know that I will use this tool later on in life.

Thing 19

Online communities can be a great place to get to know people as well as a great tool to help you keep up with certain interests. I am a member of several online communities including teacherPoP. I enjoy spending time meeting other people and learning more about things I enjoy doing. I found myself drawn to What's On My Bookshelf. I ended up making an account and I plan to go home and start loading books to for other people to trade. I might find some social network sites useful later but for now I am going to enjoy trying my hand at my new online community.

Thing 18

The link to my Twitter is here. I think it is important for educators to understand social networking sites because it allows teachers to keep up with the social needs of their students. We can even see when our students are being bullied in cyber space. I do not care for twitter because it can get too social because of all the silly updates you can get from celeberties.  I do not see an educational use for twitter. I have a personal facebook that I keep very private but I choose not to share the link to it. I enjoy facebook but I do not think it has any educational value.

Thing 17

I do not like del.icio.us. I found it to be a big waste of time. While anyone can now save bookmarks that can be accessed from anywhere, it is hard to navigate. I I uninstalled the tool bar after just a couple of uses. I had a hard time finding my bookmarks after I saved them. This is not a tool I can see a teacher using in a classroom. I know I will not use it in my classroom. I refuse to use other social bookmarking sites as well.

Thing 16

The start page I choose was Women For Women. This start page spoke to me because of the classes I am taking this semester. I feel that women need to find their voice and use it to help other women find their own voice. I have already made my new start page my home page. I love having it be the first thing I see when I start up the internet. The online calendars would be very useful to keep in an educational setting to help students know about upcoming events in your classroom. These calendars could also be useful for giving you reminders about upcoming events. I enjoyed using Ta-Da List but it was a lot of work. I will however keep my to-do list on my start page. I like having all my needs in one spot. I used lifehacker.com to help me learn how to make my computer more productive. I liked this tool a lot and added it to my google reader.

Thing 15

I had a hard time with the APSU23Things sandbox. It was more trouble than it was worth. I am sure wikis can be useful in an educational setting. I might even create one for a presentation I have coming up. This idea is awesome. I would love to see this concept come to fruition and be used in classrooms. I also think that looking at other people's wikis can be helpful even if anyone can edit the information. My only concern with wikis is that since anyone can edit the wiki, you might have someone trying to cause problems or mess up something and you end up with incorrect information. I will try my hand at creating one down the road and I just might come to like it.

Thing 14

The first tool I choose was bubbl.us. This site was so user friendly. I had a blast making my mind map. I had a hard time brain storming an idea to start this off with. I think this tool could be useful for planning for a field trip or even what activities we are gonna do next week. This tool might even be useful for brain storming on a paper. I can see myself using this tool in the future.


The second tool I choose to work with was gliffy.com. I hated this site because there was no real guide to get you through your first use of the site. I felt like I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off. I wish this site could be more user friendly or have a tutorial. This site does not have any real educational value that I can see.I will not use this site in the future.

Thing 13

I was not a fan of ZOHO. I found that since I could not post my documents directly to my blog, I had to copy and paste my response into blogger. I do not see how this could be useful in the classroom. I refuse to ever use this site again. I guess it might be helpful in you had no word processing program on the computer.

Here are my thoughts on Google Docs

Overall I prefer googledocs because it allows sharing and editing among groups of people. ZOHO is more difficult to use and sharing is not easy to do. I hope that I have some chances for my students to use googledocs in the classroom.