Thing 18

Before this activity, I already had both facebook and twitter accounts.  I very rarely use twitter, but I love Facebook.  It allows me to keep up with my family and friends in other places, and it made the move from Georgia to Tennessee a little easier.  It is important that educators know how social networking works.  As educators, we have to think twice about everything we post (pictures and/or words), because nothing put in cyberspace is totally private.  On a positive note, social networking has a very bright side for educators.  We can interact with our students and parents like never before.  I think that a classroom "page" on facebook could be useful for communication with students and parents.  If parents granted their permission, pictures from daily activities could even be posted on this private group page.  Parents could have a "window" to see what goes on in the classroom. 

Concerning twitter, I use way too many words for twitter, and frankly I don't have time to follow others' tweets.  I prefer utilizing Facebook when I like, and the ability to be excessively verbal when I want.  I would not use twitter in the classroom.

Thing 17----Sidetracked by "wordle"

I enjoyed this activity more than I anticipated.  However, I became very sidetracked.  I should have accomplished three "things" by now, but I found a site I liked because of this "thing".  I typed in educational technology and explored the results.  I then decided to check out a bookmark that had tags that caught my right-brained attention....words such as creativity, clouds, peace and love.  Well, not really peace and love, but I decided to check out the site that many had bookmarked.   By visiting this site, you can type in a lot of text, and have a word cloud created for you, in any font and color you choose.  I'm supposed to be talking about the bookmarking tool for this post, but let me just throw in that "wordle" would be a really fun way for a student to practice spelling words.  Anyway, I can definitely see the potential of the bookmarking tool in the classroom.  It's like having an organizer for outside resources, yet it's interactive.  You can share with and borrow from fellow educators, and build an arsenal of continuously updated resources.  I will definitely use this tool!

Thing 16

I chose iGoogle and decided to use it as my homepage on my tablet, because I am the main user.  I chose iGoogle because I tend to use Google for everything else.  The to-do list was not too much work, because I had already set up an account with Remember the Milk.  I think creating an iGoogle account/page for a classroom could be beneficial and informative for the parents and students.  Instead of a classroom web-site, this could be used for that purpose.  It's easy to update, and helpful links to outside resources can be included.  As far as personal use, I am already an avid user of Google calendar.  I also liked Sticky notes....may use these in the future!

Thing 15

I can see that wikis are a powerful tool for educators.  What a great collaborative tool for sharing ideas!  I enjoyed playing in the "sandbox" and seeing others' classroom ideas.  Upper grade students could also use this tool to collaborate on group projects from their homes, without having to meet outside of school.

Thing 14

The end of the semester has been busy!  This activity helped me, in that I was able to use bubbl.us to organize my thoughts for my last paper.  I explored Gliffy also, but liked the simplicity of bubbl.  I organized my thoughts and ideas for the format of my paper on reading fluency.  It was easy to use and I will use the chart I created to complete my final assignment for the class.  I can also use these sites to help my students when they have a project or paper in my class.  It will be a great tool to show them how to organize information!

Thing 13

This is a drawing I did with Google Docs.  I am a Google fan.  Although Zoho was user-friendly, and I did type a couple of test documents using the productivity apps, I prefer to keep life simple and use Google for as much as I can.  I could see where both of these sites have benefits for educators and students.  Older students working on group projects could collaborate, edit, and complete a project all on-line.  I also liked the fact that the user can work off-line, but that edits are made visible and updated as soon as it is changed back to on-line.  I had not experimented with the different tools specific to shared documents.  I will more than likely use these tools in my classroom, especially with upper grades.