Oh, Merciful End

If nothing else, this technology course has shown me how much innovation and intimidation is really out there in the digital world! Coming into this course, I had not a clue what to expect. The format seems beneficial for those who need the freedom to maneuver time around a project which needs more than simply an hour and twenty five minutes to post a project. Having the work days was critical in the success of myself and those I have spoken to in class.

I am thrilled that I now know how easy it is to create a blog such as this and will perhaps continue the blogging journey once I am in-service. One thing is for certain, I will know more than my children at this stage; parents know what I mean. Staying ahead of the student is always beneficial to being an effective practitioner.

Knowing where to find the critical teaching tricks in the techno-sphere is part of the daily battle to reach students and this course has surely opened my eyes to the possibilities. The Google Earth site was probably the most interesting and potentially useful tool that I can imagine myself using regularly in the classroom. And, because I am a bit of an organization junkie, I plan on revisiting the Livebinders site to do more creative cataloguing.  

Once the tools have been used and become a functional part of the curriculum enhancement, the mastery and keeping up-to-date will, on measure, work itself out. The resource librarian and colleagues will be great assistance as well in the quest for the current "thing" or simply staying fresh in the blogging game.



Thing #23

23 Things Cambridge 

This Blogger website is very near to the APSU 23 Things Web 2.0. Creative Commons items are used here, but not exclusively as I have found the Cambridge site riddled with items that were not given proper credit.

Knowing Creative Commons is a share site for free use will be a great benefit for teacher ad student alike. However, there will be times (perhaps many) when fatigue or simple ambivalence will bring the occasional "copyright infringement" to the classroom.

Thing #22

My Livebinder

Wow! Finally, an alternative to saving favorites to the computer. As a teacher there will be terabytes of information that will be too much to be saved in a simple jump drive. Having a digital binder which can be accessed from any internet capable computer will be a definite advantage for those who desire to keep all the relevant information for the classroom organized and at one's fingertips...literally.

This particular embedded binder is concerned with writing techniques for essays and other forms. Calling this information to a Smartboard and having the students follow the steps on technique saves considerable time and a time consuming Power Point or handout will not need to be produced.

Thing #21

My Animoto Video

This was pretty cool. How do I know this? My children got to pick the photos out and simply loved doing the video with the cat as the star of the show. I can definitely see me having this sort of thing as a looping video in class while the students are getting themselves prepared for their day or next lesson. The ease with which a video can be produced is a great bonus for me.

Thing #20

Go for it!

YouTube is yet another source to find those nuggets of information which offer additional information and, at times, myriad perspectives on a lesson. How many of us have sat through a class and secretly prayed for a fire drill or perhaps even an assault by space aliens looking to conquer earth and enslave its inhabitants. We have all been there. The effective teacher is the one who keeps the students wondering what will be on the agenda for the day. Being predictable simply allows for embedding drudgery into the students, and that can make for a very long school year. I think all teachers, regardless their curriculum, might use a YouTube video every now and then to keep the students' mind from wandering on you. Believe me, trying to teach economics and keep it interesting is a chore of the highest degree!

Thing #19

These are examples of NING badges found on the website. The badges are personalized and allow the blogger to show their interests and individuality to viewers.

Widget applications allow the user to invest more content into the blog and may take on different forms. They are a fun and interesting way to personalize the web applications into a way of hyperlinking your content design into the larger web so that the blogger might introduce his or her personal interests to the visiting viewer.

 

Image copied from: Teacherpop.ning.com

Thing #18

I have begun an account on Twitter and have yet to really get into the whole "Tweeting" thing.

Teachers should resist the urge to dismiss social media. This would be tantamount to a teacher in the 1950s dismissing the television. The technology is here and children are going to use it if they have access to it, period. Unlike television, however, the social media have become woven into the fabric of communications all over the world. Knowing this, the teacher should be advised that without the skills in multiple communications formats, students will be severely hamstrung in today's economy.

Simply picking up the land-line or cell phone is not enough to be completely connected. The world is webbed with social networks, Wikis and more. These and other tools are a clear competitive advantage which will assist these future productive citizens in being more efficient and productive than ever before. If teachers do not embrace this in the name of the student, they are failing in their prescribed mission as educators.

The Twitter craze might be used in its short and to-the-point format. It could be used to update information about classroom activities, or perhaps incorporated into a lesson. Imagine having students learn about the early 1900s American industrial revolution and, as a project, have the students formulate a Twitter conversation between two or three captains of industry during the era. Samuel Morse could perhaps Tweet Isaac Singer about his telegraph invention and Singer back to him about his innovative sewing machine. How much fun would that be for the class!

Thing #17

Wow, this Delicious site would have been great to know about when it came time to do website-O-the-day! I have always liked tools that allow the user to get to the information quickly without investing much time in the use of various websites or searching copious amounts of google, bing, ask, or other browsers for what I am in need of. This free service is a simple and quick e-mail and password sign-up process and I am searching for information which has already been vetted by other professionals. One must be careful, however, because pay sites are seemingly not disallowed from adding their own site info in order to drum up business...Splainers is just such a site. Nevertheless, from politics to world history to geography, I think this site is delicious.

Here's an example of what my Delicious search delivered...

                                                                                                                                                                                                              Image copied from Delicious.com

Thing #16

Some people are not big fans of electronic organizers...I happen to be one of them. Give me a calendar with large day boxes and I am good to go. However, upon investigation of the iSkrybe organizer, it seems to be user-friendly and even has a nifty how-to video for those who are not self starters. Backpack was great in that it allows for the loading of incredible amounts of information. The file organization is intuitive as well. However, this and other electronic organizers are through subscription or fee based.

In the end, I like to "KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID!"....So I chose Google Calendar:

                                                                                                                                                                               Image uploaded from Nick's Google Calendar page

Thing #15

                                                                                                     Image copied from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

With all of the negative "press" students get from teachers in elementary all the way to post secondary institutions, I cannot believe the wiki has not yet died in the realm of scholarship. After all, is it not the very nature of a Wiki to allow any unfiltered information into the fold. Even if the information that is posted to the Wiki has an associated citation, what is the chance that the citation is faulty, or worse, manufactured.
The logic of the anti-wiki crowd is apparently not seen in great numbers, however, because according to this "Thing task" the wiki-mania popularity is exploding. Upon investigating various wiki pages, it appears that they are simple forms of blog sites or perhaps face book. Just another vehicle for self promotion or the sharing of events which interest a very small cross section of folks. But, then again, isn't more information sharing better than too little? I think so.

Thing #14

OMG! I believe we have a winner! These tools are a treasure trove of graphic organizing silliness! Microsoft has similar tool that can be used in teaching or presentations; however, those are on the elementary level while these take you straight to the collegiate sphere. The only negative I found was the issue of signing up for the service. For goodness sake, how many log ins and passwords can one man have!...the humanity!

MIND MAPPING

I made this graphic organizer on Mind Mapping. It is a spider chart that is advertised as a lesson plan organizer. The chart clearly shows the main points, resources, and requisite knowledge required for the successful completion of the unit's lesson. Cool stuff to toy with!

Thing #13

ZOHO WRITER
Wow! The Zoho Writing App is great. The forms and sample letters are just the thing a soon to be graduating student might need...yes I mean cover letters and resume builders. However, I must say even though this is a useful and free tool, I was using the same sort of boilerplate products developed by Microsoft in the 1990s. I suppose it takes the new and snappy name like Zoho to bring it into current style; not to mention, Microsoft didn't have a screenplay template.


GOOGLE DOCS
It is supremely obvious that Google collaborated with Microsoft as the tool bar looks and works suspiciously like Word and Power Point. Like Zoho, I believe this App is simply a recycling of old products. The item I created for this post could have been produced on another tool that I am more familiar with. Perhaps some of these Apps are made with the next generation in mind as most people will not take the time to learn a different system or a derivative of an existing one.

Students will be able to use this tool for putting together team projects to display during class presentations or journals for project based learning. Might be fun for them!

Thing #12

Google's and iGoogle translate website are the best. Having the quick access to items for making a blog site or homepage for teaching is priceless when a teacher wants tech to be accessible and simple for classroom enhancement.

The gadgets are very useful. The intuitiveness of how to navigate around and put into practice the site is what one would expect from any Google creation. Feeds from iGoogle, such as the "news" RSS feeds, and others like geography and finance are a full measure of awesmeness for a social studies teacher. Using www.google.com/ig I am able to log in using the same email and password I hadset up for the class blogger account and associated gadgets.  

Above is a snip of the added gadget, "Leadership Quote of the Day," to my iGoogle page.
The screenshot was copied from: http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/111144257485755267205/leadership3.png

Thing #11

In my wildest dreams (or perhaps nightmares) did I ever consider there being so many choices for so many different feeds, readers, blogs, mashups, pinups, pileups, dialups, ...wow! It truly makes one's head spin. However, I believe that when all of these different information sharing tools catch on in the main stream, the easiest to use will be the standard-bearer of the RSSs. Technorati and Topix were too busy and I really did not like the aesthetics of the sites and the confusion it promoted. Although Topix was the better of the two, I believe I will stay with the Google Reader that is incredibly intuitive for the user. After all, how much easier can it be than to simply type in a word and it will immediately show results and allow one to subscribe with one click. Search no longer for a format reader, Google Reader is the ticket!

Google Reader icons were procured from: http://aux2.iconpedia.net/uploads/4267480351366915913.png

Thing #10

I follow several blogs with Google Reader. I follow History, Caitlin's Way, Erica Peredez, Erica Tucker, and Teacher in Training. The Reader allows me to search the blogs for the specific information I am interested in without the need to read the entire blog to find the subject of interest. Basically, this is a nifty time-saving device that can seriously cut down on the hunt, so to speak. The one-stop shopping capability of the RSS makes this a fundamental tool for anybody's online kit or bag of tricks. Moreover, plugging into a teachers style network will pay off in the sharing of information at light speed. Imagine having an RSS feed from the school website, favorite blogs, current items from a particular research field. I have said it before and I will say it again, "Imagine the possibilities!"

Feed Icon copied from:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/43/Feed-icon.svg/128px-Feed-icon.svg.png

Thing #9

GOOD LUCK TEAM!!!!

 

 

 

I found that Image Chef was a simple and useful tool to produce vast amounts of visuals that could potentially be useful in a classroom, in the hallway, or perhaps even a gymnasium door or transferred to a banner for a larger audience. This particular image was produced in mere seconds because of the simplicity of the site layout. Once on the site, the viewer is immediately cued into the possibilities of the image makers and helpful templates and categorical layouts makes the site interesting and fun. Teachers might find the image generator as a way to liven up handouts or even the bland walls of a classroom. Additionally, students might be taught how to create their own images for use during group projects, art projects, or math products. With the thousands of current images and the ones that are continually being generated daily, the usefulness of this tool is only limited by the users imagination.