Monday, October 29, 2012

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.

                                        

Friday, October 26, 2012

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

Monday, October 15, 2012

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.

Sunday, October 14, 2012

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!

Thursday, October 4, 2012

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.

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

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.