Summary

Wow, I can't believe I have completed 23 things. It has truly been a pleasure. Learning all of this stuff has opened my eyes to the use of so much technology. And to make this sound even worse, most of the things we are learning about were created by children, young adults. My favorite was blogging in general. I like the different aspects of socializing. When I was in school, we had pen pals that lived in other states and countries. It took forever for us to communicate with each other. Now it takes a matter of seconds. We have come a long way, because I am not that old!!! I really enjoyed animoto and the stikkit. Those are 2 things I will surely continue. This program has taught me that I am living like the Flintstones. The only thing that I found unexpected was the amount of time it took to do some of the things. I loved the flow of the program. There may be a couple of things that could be moved around. I would participate in another discovery program, because I love to learn on my terms. AS a teacher the things I have learned will help me tach different concepts and stay organized. I will follow my RSS feeds and continue to blog. I am a blogger now.

Thing 23

Creative Commons is a site that I will use to make sure I am not violating copyright laws. It gets kind of tricky on what you can and can't use. I must make sure i am not violating the copyright law and using someone's work without their permission. That would be stealing. I am here to shape and mold the minds of innocent children and I can not teach them what is right if I am not doing the right thing. I noticed that Learning 2.0 gave credit to Helene Bowers and they also gave credit to the California School Library Association for its adaption. It also tells us that this permission was granted under the Creative Commons License.

Thing 22

Podcasting was ok but I did not find it very useful. It may be useful for the students to be able to look up things of interest, however I could not find much of an educational need for me or a personal need. Educational podcast directory was the site I searched. It was simple to use and I did not have to register for anything (thank goodness). I feel like all of my personal business is floating around in cyberspace.

Thing 21

I enjoyed using this feature. I think this would be something we could use for our school's web site. When we have things happening at school we can take pictures and post them online to the school's web page. I will continue to use this feature at home and at school. It was easy to set up, I just wish they had more musical selections.

Thing 20

I chose the first video because I am a math teacher who is always looking for innovative ways to capture students attention. The second video I chose because I belong to the sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha. We are celebrating 100 years of existence and I was not able to attend boule. I found that it was hard for me to come up with video titles that I really wanted to see. The thing I did not like was the fact that you had to look at all of the videos to find the one that you really wanted to use. Unless it is a video that I have place on you tube, I don't think I will be using it. As far as school related, the only benefit I can see is using tags for references.

Thing 19

Visit 23 Thingsters

All of this social networking is fun, however I still can't get into it. I don't have enough time to sit and look at profiles, pictures, and find friends. I can't see how this is beneficial to me. I am not a member of any of these sites besides ning and myspace. The only thing I would like to see is a site for christian adults. I guess I need to start that one:)

Thing 18

Find me on MySpace and be my friend!
I already had a my space account. I have 2 teenage sons and several teenage nieces. During my family reunion on July 4th. they decided that I needed to be on my space. This turned out to be a good thing because they set up the account for me. Now I have got to try to figure out how to keep my students from knowing about it. There should be a place for you to only allow certain types of people to invite you to be their friend. I don't really see any reason to use this at school, other than for social networking. This is a good way for old friends to reconnect. I found out that I can see some of my friends, friend's and that allows me to invite them to be my friend.

Thing 13

I have fallen in love with Zoho Writer. I love the fact that I can view some things while offline also. This program has various uses. I am able to create appointments, create databases, share this with others and let them change things. This is extremely helpful while in a masters class. We did lots of group work, but everyone was not always able to get together to brainstorm and edit the paper. With Zoho writer this is possible without having to email the document then waiting for it to come back before you can see the changes and respond.

Thing 17

While viewing delicious, I immediately thought about web sites that my students could use for math tutorials, extra help, and homework help. I am going to set up some tags for them and their parents to use while away from school. I think I will use this with my team members to prepare lesson plans and cross curriculum plan. In our school libraries this would be a great way for librarians to help students choose books that are interesting. A student will have the option of searching tags for things that they would like to read. It can also be used for research.

Thing 16

I chose igoogle for my start page. To be honest, I already had that start page, but it did not have anything on it. I added some special interest things and rearranged the features. This will remain my permanent page.
I created the online calendar through yahoo. Again because I already use yahoo, it made it easy to add things to it and navigate through the calendar. I can use this for meetings, deadlines, and birthdays.
I chose stikkit to exlore. I needed a way to jot things down and come back to it. I use stickies all the time and I feel like this would be helpful online. I usually forget some things that I need to do or explore, so with stikkit I can leave myself a sticky note.
The tadalist was my favorite. I am planning a massive family vacation for 2009. This includes everyone in my family. I will use this to send out list of things that need to be done and we can all update it as needed. I can also assign certain things to certain people and they can complete them at will.

Thing 15

At my campus we are placed into teams. Our team has to collaborate together to come up with ideas for discipline, lessons, activities, field trips, and other things. Email is so slow, and it is hard for 5 people to collaborate together with so many emails going in and out. With the wiki I think it will create a place for us to share and collaborate without having to send and receive emails. It will allow us to change things so that it fits our plan and everyone can have an input. During taks time we very seldom get to meet face to face. Wiki will allow us to continue to meet but from a distance:)

Thing 14

Our 6th grade curriculum has now made it mandatory that we incorporate thinking maps into our lessons. I personally don't like the kid drawn thinking maps. They don't get them quite right. It also waste some time getting them drawn. Now that we have giffy.com, I can take them to the computer lab and let them do certain flow charts using this site. I also do a lesson in geometry where the children have to draw the floor plan of their house, this site would be beneficial to them so that they can get a better visual of what it should look like. The mind maps are a little different. You can't make different designs so I don't think I will be using it very much.

Thing 12

I decided that I would tour the google calendar. This tool is very useful for students who have trouble remembering when things are due. This calendar has a reminder on it and they can benefit from that. It would be exceptionally useful when they have a project that is to be done in stages. The next thing I looked into was google notebook tour. This tool is useful to me when I am putting together a lesson. I sometimes find lessons that I would like to use, however it does not fit my situation perfectly. I then go to another site to help tweek the lesson. With notebook, I can add them all to one page.