Thing 13

Thing 13-- Below is part of my test that I made through ZOHO.  This site is great for teachers.  You can make tests with multiple choice, true or false, fill in the blank and open ended questions.  It even grades it for you!  This could be especially helpful for students who are missing a day at school.

Section 1

Section Instructions : 

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New Question| Pick From Q-Bank| Define Random Questions

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• 1. The lady's dress was very ________ for the opera.
• Question Type : Fill up the blanks

• Points: 10
• 

Answers

• Elegant

Answer key / Comments :No comments available

 No tags available

• 2. The lion's _______roar scared the children.
• Question Type : Fill up the blanks

• Points: 10
• 

Answers

• Fierce

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I checked out Google Docs too.  While I tremendously like ZOHO, I am more apt to say that GoogleDocs is more usable.  It creates so many different things.  They are both very helpful in the classroom.  In ZOHO, I didn't have to download anything, it was there and ready for me to use, although I did have to sign up.  In Google Docs I had to download an app but I didn't have to put in any personal information.  I also noticed that ZOHO charges for some of their apps.  So, for my classroom I would choose Google Docs because of it's access after downloading and it's completely free!  Students could work together on their own computers or together to learn in and outside of the classroom.  They could create artwork, do assignments, and make spreadsheet presentations.  Not only could they make them, but they could easily be read by anyone that has downloaded the app, unlike using a PC and trying to read it on a MAC!  

Thing 10

Thing Ten

RSS is a fabulous way for teachers to keep up to date on what they are interested in.  By having all of this information in one place, it saves class time by not having to go to each site individually and having to sign in and use your password.  Everything is already signed in by using your Google account!  What's even more amazing is that you can email these to other teachers to keep them up to date too!  All that extra time in the classroom means more learning!!  Not only can this help teachers at school, but also at home.  You can keep track of all of your stuff at once, which also means, more family time!  This could be a very important tool for any teacher or educator!

Thing 12

I have always use Google, just as Wikipedia announced, even as a verb.  I say it quite commonly that I will google that!  How funny because this term "google" didn't exist in my vocabulary 20 years ago.  Oh how easy those high school reports would have been!  Little did I know that Google Alerts or Google Translate existed!  I tried them both out and couldn't believe the information you can get from these sites!!  Google Translate would be a great tool to communicate with students and their parents that did not speak English!  So much goes unspoken between teacher and ELL students because of the wall between their languages.  Google Alerts is also amazing!  You can keep up to date on anything that is important to you through an email whenever Google acquires additional or new information on the subject.  Talk about a way to teach Civics class!!  Even as we are in class, history is being made all around us.  What we knew going in to class that day, might change throughout your day, and with Google Alerts you can get notified immediately!  Check these tools out as they can be a wonderful tool for your classroom too! www.googletranslate.com and www.googlealerts.com

Thing 3

I have officially registered by blog for the 5th time!!  Had a little bit of trouble for a while, but I am confident this is done right this time!  I would use a blog in my classroom to help keep the students, parents, and other teachers in a position to communicate with each other.  I would post the week's activities for the class and homework that will be assigned, along with any announcements, as I know well from my own children, they don't always bring home the notes from class!  Parents and students alike could post homework problems that they need help with, suggestions or even praise for the students.  It is a wonderful way to keep everyone up to date on all the things of the classroom.

Thing 16

iGoogle

I chose iGoogle as my homepages and I love it!  This homepage had so much to offer.  It was very easy to use and didn't take a lot of downloading time.  I definitely made this my homepage!

This is by far my favorite Thing yet!  I am a very organized person.  Having all of my information and webpages in one place is amazing.  My new laptop did not come with a downloaded calendar, which I deeply depended on with my old computer to remind me of important events.  Since I have signed up for Google Calendar, I now have that luxury back.  It sends me notices by email and by showing up on my iGoogle page.  I also added the app Sticky Notes.  My screen is covered in yellow sticky notes, so having an online system for these is much easier!  I also added the app for the To Do List.  I am the worlds most meticulous lister!  Everything NEEDS a list!  This app was apparently made especially for me.  A few more apps that I chose are Dictionary, Thesaurus, Breaking News, and This Day in History.  These and many more could be very beneficial to our students.  It's a daily learning process, which would be great for morning work and to discuss things special about that day.  I can't tell you which apps I would recommend, because I loved them all!  I had to stop looking at additional ones, because my page was going to be too full!  iGoogle is definitely something I would recommend!

                                               

Thing 6

Thing Six:  Discovering Web 2.0 tools.

I chose Stardoll.com to learn more about.  My daughter uses this as often as I will allow her online.  Just watching it you think that they are playing and not learning, but not true in the least sense.  After reading what this site is about, you realize that they are not just playing, but learning in a new exciting way.  Today, many of our Arts programs are being cut due to budget lows.  Using stardoll, students can use their own imagination in creative arts by creating costumes and such with this Web 2.0 tool.  It allows the student to learn about colors, techonology, art and just plain fun using this electronic "dress up dolls" web- based learning.  It can also be used in the classroom as a sort of incentive to good behavior.  Not only are the students trying hard to earn the reward, but as they use Stardoll they are also learning and it is not wasted time.  Technology today can be used in so many ways, that students don't realize they are getting an education through play.

Thing 7

Picture owned by swimbackdanman via Flick   rhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/19827415@N06/2364774081/

Wow, I am completely blown away at the information you can get from www.flickr.com. This site allows you to go to places you will probably never go.  This site is great for visual information.  As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.  This site has unlimited infinite "words" in visual form.  Using this website, you can get ideas for events such as weddings or parties.  It allows you to see how the rest of the world's culture does things.  You aren't just limited to the traditions we have grown up with.  Flickr also allows you to "be" somewhere across the world, as in my picture of the great blue hole.  I am terrified of the ocean, so this is not a place I would ever be scuba diving.  I still want to learn about that amazing blue hole and see for myself the awe that others have seen when going there.  It gives everyone the same opportunites to see God's amazing handicrafted world.  30 years ago, we relied on what other people told us these things looked like.  Now, we can see first hand!!

Thing 9

Thing Nine

Generators are the absolute best idea ever!  You see these everywhere, but little did I know, you don't have to pay for these at the mall kiosks!!  These could be great reward incentives for students or really great learning activities for students to be creative with.  The first picture above was created at www.fototrix.com.  It is me and one of my friends.  The next one below it  is of a dummies book. I created this one at www.customsigngenerator.com  I thought it would only be appropriate to relate it to myself!!  I will have so much fun with this in the future!  I never thought this would be available to the public!!  I'm so excited!! 

Thing 1

Thing One!!  Through this class, I have found out the importance of learning to use technology.  Mrs. Richardson has given us lots of instruction with great knowledge.  We also had a guest speaker that showed us how to use the video cams and learn to upload to our site.  It is very important for teachers to learn to work together as a group to accomplish what is best for the student's learning.  When in class, it is comforting to know that our educator knows how to show us new things.  By having a guest speaker, Mrs. Richardson, showed us the importance of learning from other educators!

Thing 23

The Creative Commons...

This proves to me that the image/application that was used is legal to be used, shared, and modified.


This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

I most certainly will make my students aware of the problems they may face if they use a licensed product illegally.  I will have each student quizzed on the Creative Commons practices and have them use these techniques while in my classroom.  I certainly did not know until I did this lesson, that it was illegal to use pictures from online.  I thought since they were posted it was safe to use.  I am glad that I now know how to prevent illegally using these.  I have already taught my daughter the legal way to use these applications.

Thing 22

LIVEBINDERS!!!

What an amazing way to save your stuff!  With Livebinders you can have one site that connects you with other important sites including web pages, videos, pdf's, music, art, images and just about anything else you can think of.  This would be a great tool for the students as well as the teacher and parents.  Classwork could be done through this.  It would be a great tool for students that missed a homework assignment, or a parent wanting to help their with homework.  You could post links and help pages to help the parent understand the work.  Each section is divided by tabs and subtabs.  It's completely free!
     I created a binder to help my students and their parents.  The binder I made is titled "Homework Help".  This should enable parents to get the knowledge they need to help their child with homework.
     Next I created one called "Online Quizzes". These websites will help strengthen the student's learning by doing these online quizzes at home.  While this isn't considered homework, parents could help the child to learn by allowing them time on the computer at night to work on this.  It is also good to let students who learn at a faster pace to use these sites as free time on the computer at school when their regular work is finished.  This keeps the student engaged and not wasting time sitting around waiting for other students to finish.
     The third binder I created is titled "Powerpoint".  Sometimes students learn by visually seeing the lesson and how it applies to what they are doing.  Using powerpoints allows this option.
 

http://www.livebinders.com/play/play?id=642323

<div style="width:75px; height:78px; background-image:url(http://www.livebinders.com/images/binder_icon_private.gif); border:0px; margin-top:4px; background-repeat: no-repeat"> <a href="http://www.livebinders.com/play/play?id=642323"> <img src="http://open.thumbshots.org/image.pxf?url=http://www.softschools.com/quizzes/language_arts/" style="width:60px; height:60px; border:0px; padding:0px;margin:11px 0px 0px 13px;" /> </a> </div> <div><a href="http://www.livebinders.com/play/play?id=642323">Online quizzes</a><br /></div>

Thing 15

                                                             The Sandbox!

Wiki.....what a hilarious word.  It sounds like song lyrics from the 80's.  If only rap songs from the 80's could be as useful as Wiki's!   I go to www.wikipedia.com consistently for information.  I joined APSU's 23 things wiki too!  I added my post from my blog about Animoto, thing 21 and I named my page Kelli's Animoto.
This tool could be very useful and beneficial to students.  They could create their own class wiki and discuss homework and procedures. It could be managed by the teacher to be sure the information was correct.  They could also use other important wiki's to find information about their projects or homework.  I find these sites quite important in my ongoing need of new knowledge.

Thing 21

My Animoto Video         

My Animoto Video is on America

                                                            


  This site is amazing.  What a great way to create an amazing photobook to share.  This tool would be great to share with family, especially out of state family, of the things you and your family are doing.  This would also be great for a classroom project to share at the end of the year of all of the fun learning experiences the children had.  Parents and educators alike would find this tool very valuable!  The link below is my video.

http://animoto.com/play/m4asr7SZ3s0ySQN0qBWoUA

Thing 19

I am now a member of www.bakespace.com.  This is a wonderful tool to find recipes.  Not only do you find the tried and true recipes of the past, but new ones and family specialites.    I have also joined www.teacherpop.com.  This is a fabulous tool for educators.  This allows educators to share plans, ideas, and great new ways of teaching our students and keep them engaged.  There are many new ideas to teaching and even getting your teaching licensure that are still unclear to me.  Using teacherpop.com, I can find out the important information that I need to be an effective teacher.  I may also be able to help other new education students by blogging about my college experiences, so that they wouldn't feel anxious like I did about acquiring new skills.

                                        

Thing 20

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqdBZZToCpw&feature=player_detailpage

Property of You Tube through CC



You Tube has been a very important tool already in schools and personal life.  I have used it myself to listen to music for my Music Appreciation class.  You can use it for music, videos, presentations, commercials, and practically anything you can imagine!  I chose the following video for my future classroom. These videos are great.  They teach the students the proper way to use grammar and put it into a fun song.  The students would love to learn in this fun new way much more so than lecture and they will remember it.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqdBZZToCpw&feature=player_detailpage

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3h42RWnCB0&feature=player_profilepage

Thing 17

Property of Delicious through CC

Delicious is a fabulous website.  It's a great way of collecting and sharing information to use later.  I can use this for personal, educational and just about any kind of use.  When I find a website that interests me, I can tag it and put it into a category of my choice.  This makes it much easier to find at a later date.  I can make it public, private, or share with specific people.  What a great way for a school to stay connected with projects for certain subjects!  So, all those websites we pull up and think we are finished with can be tagged for later use.  This eliminates tons of time researching for that site and information.
                                                                  
 

Thing 18

                                                 
                                                                  Facebook

               Most people today have a Facebook page.  Me, well, I depend on it. I get up, fix breakfast, get the kids ready for school, and check my Facebook page.  I seem to be unable to cope with beginning my day without checking my page.   I have found this to be my daily "newspaper".  I throw out a bit of information when at school or church with my friends and they inquire as to where I heard that.  My response is almost always "Facebook"!  The word Facebook is used daily as a noun, verb, adjective, etc.  It's part of our everyday conversation.  My personal facebook page can be reached here https://www.facebook.com/kelli.c.shoemake?ref=tn_tnmn. 

It's extremely important for educators to know that facebook is public unless specified!  I have read so many teacher friends' page and wonder how they ever became a teacher.  Not only is it public, it is a permanent record and can be used in court.  Employers use Facebook when hiring new employees.  If you don't want someone else to know, don't use a social network to announce it!

I don't personally have a Twitter account, but I found it a lot harder to start than Facebook.  Most Hollywood stars, athletes, singers, etc have a Twitter account and many people, many more teens, love to follow their favorites and keep up with their lives.

I think some of these tools, when used privately could be very useful to educators.  We could use it to keep up to date with parents and school employees.  Parents could see what their students are achieving daily their classes and also gives them a tool of communication privately with the teacher through messaging.

Thing 14

This is a diagram I created at www.Gliffy.com.  This was a lot of fun to play with.  I also tried www.mindmeister.com .  Mindmeister would be a great tool to create a family tree or even reviewing the basics characters, plots, themes, etc. of books and movies.  This diagram that I created would be used in my classroom to help students learn the basics of simple sentence structure and how the words correspond with each other.  Using the different colors, but same colors in each section, will help the students to associate what parts of speech go with other parts of speech.  Great tool!

Thing 8

I created this puzzle using www.bighugelabs.com website.  It was so much fun!  This tool could be used by the classroom to figure out answers or be creative themselves.  These puzzles can be printed or ordered.  This would be a good way to have students show their work and have fun at the same time.  You could also use it to create gifts. 

I had trouble getting www.mappr.com to work.  It showed what the finished product might look like, but I couldn't figure out how to create one of my own.  This tool could be very valuable to students as well.  It can show the student tourist attractions, people, landmarks, and all kinds of other things associated with each map they create.  That's a great way to help students visualize what they are learning and helps them more easily remember it.

Thing 11

Thing Eleven

Using Google RSS Reader, I found that Google Blog Search was the easiest for me to use.  By typing in what kind of blog you are looking for, it gives you many options to choose from and is easily accessible, especially for someone who doesn't know that much about technology.  I also found that  Edublog's Award Winners were great at finding appropriate educational blogs.  Using this site you can see who were the top winners chosen for their blog and by type of blog.  Now there is no searching for a specific type of blog and it be a great one too!  It's all right there at Edublog's website!

Topix.com wasn't as easy for me to use as the others.  It was harder to find the specific information that I needed and took longer to get there.

Unbounce was an unusual site I found interesting.  It would be a great tool for investors.  It allows you to find the top 75 feeds to keep you up to date on your financial investments.

Thing 4

I have checked out several blogs, even some that I didn't realize were blogs, such as Pinterest, Facebook, and Topix.  My daughter has used Stardoll.  I think it is really important to post comments on other people's blogs to let them know that you are reading it.  You get to know people and keep in touch with them.  There are many people that I am able to communicate with because of blogs that I normally wouldn't get to see in day to day activities.  I found it comforting of sorts to know that others were just  as apprehensive as I was about this exercise.  I also found other people's websites that they noted could be used by me also in my classroom.  I specifically chose Facebook, Pinterest, Doreen Merickle's blog, Emily Rittenberry's blog, Cristina Evans' blog, Doshanna Richards' blog, and Brittney Maultbay's blog to comment on.  I chose these because they were interesting to me and connected with what I was interested in.  I commented back about how I used or would use the ideas they had posted and what good ideas they had.

Thing 5

Thing 5-Web 2.0 learning

When I was a young student in elementary school, doing research was very time consuming and not very accurate, as printed information took several years to compile and put into a book, and then, who knows how long the library carried this information without updating.  Using Web 2.0 invites students and teachers to use the most current, unlimited knowledge on the work they are performing.  As in the article "Web 2.0 A Guide For Educators" states, this way of learning is just the "tip of the iceberg" in what will be in the future.  Many of us use facebook, pinterest, and other sites like these.  Little do we realize that these are also blogs.  It allows all of us "non-technical", as stated in the article "Web 2.0 is not about Version numbers or Betas", to use technology comfortably.  It is easily accessible by all.  Web 2.0 shows me how important the opportunites are and will be in the future to our student's learning styles.  Children do not always learn in the same ways.  Using web-based technologies allow them to communicate effectively to better their learning skills.  It is also important to me.  It's an excellent tool to keep up-to-date information on our family and friends when reading their posts.  There are so many people that I have met in my life that I am able to correspond with on a daily basis, that I wouldn't have otherwise been able to have a relation with.  So Web 2.0 means to me a whole new learning experience that is very beneficial to teachers and students.

Thing 2

Thing Two!!  I waited nervously for this day to come.  Technology has never been a strong point of mine.  My children are my tech geeks when I have trouble.  Becoming a teacher, I need to know how to do what my children are already doing and more for the future.  Usually, if I can't understand how to do a program, I will use one that I already know how to do.  Thing One brought me out of my comfort zone, unwillingly, kicking and screaming!  But now I have created my very first blogspot!  Now, I am excited about the next "Thing"!