Is It the End, or Only the Beginning?

Wow!  I do not think I have ever been so relieved of completing an assignment.  No offense.  I have literally worked on the last section of the "things" I had left all day.  Comparing this to the first part, I find these last ones more addicting and less time consuming.  It is almost midnight and I have been working on the last half since about three o'clock.  I did not expect to get done today, but I just could not put my laptop down. 

During this journey of 23 Things some of my favorite exercises consisted of video animation, photo animation, the flow chart and mind map, Delicious, and the Wiki.  So many resources were offered within this program that I plan to use for educational purposes one day.  Some of the "things" I absolutely hated, but there were several that I plan to use to benefit my learning experiences and my future classroom lessons.  Before this program I honestly had know idea of the limitless resources avaliable to teachers. 

I plan to maintain my blog to create it into something I can use for when I become a secondary teacher.  Blogging provides numerous oppotunities to collaborate and share ideas.  As a future educator, I want my students to learn through today's world and interaction.  I plan to continue blogging and providing videos and other resources for my future students.  It is very important to me to provide my students the opportunity to expand their styles of learning.  That is exactly what I plan to do, and I would not have background knowledge if it were not for this tutorial of 23 Things.

Thing 23

The attribution that I chose was the Creative Commons video from YouTube.  I had no idea that this is what the class and 23 Things was all about.  As I progressed in my blogging, I was wondering how all of this was possible.  Now, I have a better understanding of how it is acceptable.  Everything through this blog was a useful resource created with Creative Commons.  There were some tools I was not fond of, but others were very beneficial.  Also, through reading about the Creative Commons I realized that not only APSU formatted this for the 23 Things, it has been shared from school to school to help benefit aspiring Educators using Creative Commons.  Creative Commons was a great tool for interacting and learning right from wrong when it comes to technological tools and how to appropriately share others information.

Thing 22

In this "thing" we created three livebinders.  I had never heard of this website or tool, but I found it to be one of my favorites.  It provided more acurate resources than Google has, and Google has always been my favorite.  Once I found the resources, I was able to save them in the livebinders for future references.  I really wish I would have done this blog a long time ago before I completed my INTASC Notebook for my 3070 class. 

The three livebinders that I created were titled:
1. INTASC Standards
2. Teaching Tips for First Years
3. 4-8 Lesson Plans

4–8 Lesson Plans

The livebinder I shared within this blog was my 4-8 lesson plans.  I chose this one because I do plan to use this tool when I begin teaching and even for future projects with my Education classes.  This is such a fantastic tool to save resources for a specific topic.  I plan to incoporate this within my classroom for lesson planning, interactive activities, parent communication, teaching tips, and much more.  I absolutely love this web tool and plan to use it to keep track of my findings according to categories.

Thing 21

I absolutely loved Animoto.  It was very simple to create an account and get started.  At first I was nervous though because I thought you had to pay for it, and I was not happy about that.  But I overlooked the trial.  Oops! All of the pictures I used were from my Facebook albums.  I chose the vintage background and kept the music that came with it.  It was very girly and relaxing.  This would be a cool tool for students to create personalized videos for group projects.  These videos could be used to be posted on a teacher blog for parents and students to access.  Also, it would be a wonderful idea for open house nights and other Educational gatherings.  I feel that it is important for Educators to stay connected with engaging and interactive tools for students to make learning fun.  The world is advancing quickly with technology, and students will be more apt to performing higher when it is something of interest rather than lecture material.

Thing 20

I went a little different on this "thing" then focusing merely on Education. The video I chose was a program that came to my high school called Between the Barrels. This program presented to schools all across the state of Tennessee and I was a guest speaker for them. The program informs students about teen driving and precautions to take while driving with friends, drinking and driving, or slowing down during construction areas.

This is only one part of the program but it was very informative for students to raise awareness in order to save lives. This video was filmed almost three years ago, but the program still presents every year during the Spring. I have always been a huge fan for YouTube because it is where I gain all of my videos and podcasts for presentations. This is a great tool for resources for students and teachers.

Thing 19

Seriously, how cool is it that APSU has their own website "TeacherPop?"  Way cool!  This has probably been one of my favorite social networking experiences thus far with "things."  Whoever created the TeacherPop for APSU expanded the unlimited opportunities for students in the Education program to network.  Currently the online communities I am a part of are Facebook, Pinterest, Wiki, Diigo, and YouTube.


All of these I find appealing because they are a great tool for Educators and peers to swap ideas and share socially.  Pinterest is my favorite of all of these because it is a virtual pinboard.  Everything that is pinned has a category it falls under and once you click on it, it leads to a blog or website for "how to tutorials."  Recently I have enjoyed Wiki as well for collaborating on group projects.  All of these mentioned are great tools for future resources in the classroom.  Each of them in a different aspect than another, but I plan to incorporate them all.

Thing 18

http://www.facebook.com/groups/137494276493/#!/profile.php?id=1182268628

It is important for teachers to know about social networking sites because it is a great way to expand your opportunities.  Social Networking has countless resources available for teachers and aspiring teachers.  Today's society is becoming more and more technologically advanced so it is vital for teachers to understand how it works aside from resources. 

I have had a facebook since I was in high school, so I am not new to it.  However, I did just recently add the College of Education onto my friends.  This is a great way for me to keep posted on things I need to do to prepare myself to graduate.  Also, it has valuable resources for Educational purposes.  I did not create a Twitter because I refuse to have one.  That probably sounds silly, but with Facebook I just do not see the point.  I feel that Facebook is a good tool for teachers to create an Educational page for students to access compared to Twitter.

Thing 17

Surprisingly I did not have a Delicious account.  Now, I am so excited to explore the possibilities this website has to offer.  The bookmark that I chose was "teachertube" because we have talked about this in my other classes.  So, I was some what familiar with it.  The more I searched and explored the teachertube I found it absolutely wonderful!  I am not sure how this could be incorporated into the classroom besides another option for furthering research.  As for teachers, this is a great tool to ellaborate on ideas and gain useful resources to use within your own classroom.

Thing 16

I chose iGoogle for my starting point for this post.  I am addicted to Google so I did not want to explore beyond familiarity.  From my home page, the gadgets I chose were the calender, weather, and to do list.  Each of these I use daily from my phone so I figured why not set my homepage to the things I need reminded of daily as well.  The online calender and to do list are going to be very helpful because I literally live out of my paperback planner/calender. 

I type faster than I write, so these online tools are definitely going to save me time.  Both of them I found time consuming because I detail everything.  So using these it is still taking me time to insert everything I want, but it will be worth it once I am finished updating it.  I would recommend both of these tools for future Educators because it is a great way to remain organized and productive in what needs to be done.  You can set time limits for yourself to complete what needs to be done.

Thing 15

With this specific "thing" I lucked up because I have recently used a Wiki for my 3040 group presentation.  The topic we were assigned to present on was Social Networking in Education.  The main part of our presentation was on the Wiki and how we collaborated our ideas and edited things throughout our presentation.  After the project was over I asked how they had heard about Wiki because I was so fascinated with it and they explained they had previously had this class.  I thought that was pretty cool.

I think that using a Wiki within the classroom is a wonderful idea for students to collaborate on group projects.  Often when students are placed in groups either one person does all of the work or it is hard for students to meet outside of school time.  By including the Wiki into project based assessments students can sign in without having to meet to share their information for their project.  Also, for teachers to assess the amount of work each student places into it the students could color coordinate their information in the Wiki by a different color for each person.  I absolutely love using the Wiki and definitely plan to incorporate it into the classroom.

Here is the link for the Wiki my group used for our presentation (not all of it is still on here though) but you get the idea :)

http://edgroupproject.wikispaces.com/

Thing 14

For this blog, I chose to use Bubbl.us and Gliffy to create a flow chart and mind map. Both of these tools were pretty simple to follow and create charts and maps. However, Bubble.us was my favorite out of the two that I chose. Gliffy was a bit challenging I feel for students to use with short class periods. However, Bubble.us was a simple mind map that the students could add information breaking it down into different boxes connecting it to a starting point word.

The differences I noticed were that with the flow charts you orignated from one specific point and progressed outward from that topic. With mind maps, you could add as many boxes anywhere you needed to insert information. The item I chose to share was a mind map on Cultural Diversity since I just recently did a lesson plan and based the standard on for my livetext project.

https://bubbl.us/

Thing 13

As I explored both Zoho and Google Docs, I realized that Zoho was very similar to Microsoft Word. Zoho provided a tutorial in how to use it, and I felt that for the most part I already knew how to create documents with it. So, I decided to move on to Google Docs because I am a huge Google fan but have never used this application. Using Google Docs I created a drawing using word art and pictures. I feel that my future students would agree with me that out of these two applications Google Doc is more fun. Students could use Google Docs in various ways for presentations, projects, and research. Here is my link for my creation and one of the images I created.

https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1Y0zsi34t7V7bgyoD6uA_awDNLKfBXS6yl8c9FGRc_P0/edit