One Last Thing!!

I really liked most of the activities during this class. My favorite though, would have to be setting up the RSS reader. This helps to save so much time! I like the overall idea of blogging as well. I am thinking about setting up a person blogger when I finish this class. I often feel overwhelmed with technology and my fear of messing it up. I like the way this class has let us get in and play around, but also give us a guiding hand along the way. I was really surprised at how easy most of these programs were. If I am able to figure these things out and get through all of these activities, anyone can! I feel that this class is set up to help anyone succeed. I would not make any suggestions on improvement! I love taking these online (self-paced) classes. This one almost got the best of me, but a wonderful person, sent me encouraging words just as I needed them most! I would love to take another class similar to this if one was offered! As most people in this class probably feel, I think the best part of taking this class is finding ways to incooporate more technology into our daily lessons and hopefully in turn, get more attention from the students.

Once again, I truely appreciate the encouraging words from Marnie! Although I have never met you in person, I know that you are a wonderful person and very caring!

Thing 23: Beyond Facebook: Other Social Networks

Visit 23 Thingsters

This would be a great tool to set up as a campus. Being able to share articles and transform our interactive notebook into a technology form would be great! The biggest complaint that I have heard from our campus about our interactive notebooks is taking time out of our schedule to meet and discuss. This could be done online and everyone could share their opinions during their own time. Too often, the time we had to meet interfered with parent meetings or other things that we had to get done. This could be done at a time that is convenient for the teachers on an individual basis!

Thing 22: Explore Social Networking

Facebook is something that I have open almost all the time! Even now, while typing this blog, Facebook is open in another tab that I can switch back and forth between any time I want!

Today's students are just the same as me! They are on the social networking sites any time they are able to be! This is their open line to communication with friends not only for social reasons, but I have had several of my students tell me that they were able to get help from a friend on their homework through these sites. We not only need to know what technology is out there, but we need to be familiar with the terms that they see on these sites when we emphasize the importance of hiding personal information. They can be told millions of times the danger involved in giving out their personal information, but until they meet someone who means something to them that also knows the terms that they see on the computer, they just brush it off!

I have used both Myspace and Facebook and I can say, in my opinion, Facebook is not only easier to use, but it has many more features than Myspace does. I have seen from experience, the way that Facebook has helped many people find jobs, not just in the education fields, but in corporate America as well. It is always about knowing someone, and the more connections you have, the better your chances are at advancing in today's economy!

Thing 7b: Google Reader Revisited

I subscribed to a blog called Making Teachers Nerdy. She posted a blog called Top 20 Websites No Teacher Should Start the 2010-2011 Year Without. This is definitely a page that I am going to bookmark. No, it doesn't have every website that you will ever need, but it does have a great selection. I think this would be a great resource to be able to use when you are not quite sure what different options you have to do a particular job!

Thing 21: Google's not just for searching anymore

I have always known that Google was HUGE, but never would have imagined it being this huge! Until about a year ago, I thought the only thing Google was, was a search engine and emails. Then throughout this past school year, I learned about GoogleDocs. This was a great tool for us to use to manage our discipline as a team. Then, during one of the first weeks of this class, we discovered the Google Reader. I was once again surprised at how easy these tools are to use. During this "Thing," I was able to play around with Google Alerts and Google Calendar. For my Google Alert, I typed in Dallas Cowboys. You are able to set it to the number of emails you receive a day, as well as how many articles are in that email (or alert). This could be very beneficial to use to find new things being posted about a particular topic in school. For instance, if I were to teach history, and wanted to know everything being posted about John Kennedy, I could set up an alert for that and receive it straight to my email! The second thing I played around with was Google Calendar. This could be very beneficial for lesson planning. Having a calendar that everyone has access to that gives just a brief explination of what is being taught that day, would help not only in writting lesson plans, but also in daily notes and assignments!

Thing 20: GoogleDocs

When I first started using GoogleDocs, I was really surprised at how easy it is to use. As a campus, we were introduced to it by our assistant principal. He had already introduced it to the other two principals on our campus as a way to keep up with office issued detentions. Each team leader was given access to it to enter team issued detentions that were served through the office. We then decided to take it a step further. As a team, we then started using GoogleDocs to handle our team discipline. This was my first time to set a GoogleDoc up myself. I was again surprised at how easy it was to set up and invite others to join. I think another way that we would benefit using this would be as a math department. I like to give my students a copy of our notes. If we all particpated in this, we could all put notes in here so that we all didn't have to do it on a daily basis. We could then adjust the notes as needed to fit our teaching style.

Thing #19 - Voicethread

I think voicethreads will be very beneficial to use for students who are out of the classroom for one reason or another. If they are able to access it from home, they would still be able to hear the lesson and learn the concept for the day that they were out. If they are unable to access it from home, it may be a good idea to pull them out of their accelleration class and have them watch the lesson then. They would still need the full lesson, so the teacher would need to record the lesson and post it to their page. This would definately take time on the teachers part, but this could be something that we split up among the teachers in our department and each do a part. It may actually be beneficial for the students to be able to hear a different teacher present the lesson too! If a student is struggling in comprehending the lesson, they could get on the voicethreads and hear a different teacher teach it!