Is it the End or Only the Beginning?

     My favorite exercises in this learning journey involved creating something new.  I loved the Youtube and Animoto exercises because I was given a lot of freedom with what I chose and I got to create something that was really cool.  I also enjoyed the activities that involved the social networking sites.  I feel like some of the other posts might be a bit boring because there are not many pictures to look at.

     This program has affected my lifelong learning goals because I now really want to know more about what is out there in educational technology.  I would love to develop something that my students can do online that will help them learn, and I would love to share that with other educators.  There is now so much out there and it is constantly changing.  My lifelong learning goals now include technology and to keep on a level that will continuously help my students.

     I was surprised at how much was actually out there for educators to use in their classroom.  This experience also gave me a new way to look at tools that I already had access to.  I plan on looking at a number of different things I do online in a new way and attempt to gear it towards my classroom.

     I think the best way to improve this program is to break things up a bit differently.  I know that similar things are grouped together for a reason, but I think that if the more fun activities were mixed in evenly the blog would be more interesting and people would enjoy it more, at least I know I would.  Other than that, everything was great!

     I have already spoken a bit about how this activity will influence my practice as a teacher.  Students love technology and they love doing activities on it.  I will try to incorporate much more of this in my classroom time.  I feel much more confident with how to do this and can't wait to start.

     I plan to keep up with new developments in Web 2.0 by simple Google checks and looking up the latest research.  A good way to do this is watch for new things on Pinterest and Twitter.  People are constantly posting new things out there.

     I hope to re purpose this blog when I get my own classroom or even start a new one just for my experience as an educator.  This is not the last that you will hear from me on the edublog front!  That I can guarantee.

Thing # 23

I found this Wiki for the 23 things blog for the Georgia Department of Education when I Googled 23 things.I searched around a bit and found a Creative Commons mark.  Here is a picture of it:

This shows that it was developed originally by Helene Bowers and that Shelley Paul, the person who is responsible for this particular site, is using it and has adapted it.  She also asks people who are planning to adapt her version of 23 things to contact her.

I think that I will use Creative Commons as a teacher as I discover new things that I want to use in my class.  If I find an interactive thing like 23 things for my students, I will make sure that it is covered by Creative Commons and that I can adapt it to my students needs.  I will also make sure to use images and other resources that are covered by Creative Commons.  I will also make sure that any original things I make that pertain to education I will put a Creative Commons license on.  I will want other teachers to have access to my work and fix it for their students' needs.

Thing # 22

     I created three binders in LiveBinder.  I named them Student Teaching, History for Fun, and Economics class.  Below i embedded my Economics Class Binder.  Creating my live binder account was pretty easy, but embedding it in the blog post gave me some problems.  It caused everything to shift around and wouldn't always show up when it needed to.

  I think that LiveBinder could be useful for assignments with students.  I could make a public binder and have my students use the links provided to create something.  I think it would be cool to put up different history websites and have them make a pretend newspaper of the times that were presented in the the binder.  I could even offer different binders that were specific to certain eras (for example: A victorian England One, Roaring 20's, Vietnam War Era, etc.).

Economics Class

Thing # 21

     This is the video I made using Animoto.  I used pictures from my Facebook account, uploaded a song that I had on my computer and liked.  I really liked using Animoto.  It was really fun to use and allowed you to pull stuff from all over your computer and the internet to incorporate.  It had great pre-made templates for you to use.  It's kind of a bummer that you have to pay for a full video, but I could see myself making more of these in the future.




Class Project

Thing # 20

     I actually really love Youtube.  I use it all the time and it is really easy to find a video that you are looking for through a description or a few key words.  It also links you to similar videos that you simply click on and they play.  I chose this Youtube video because it is a fun way to look at an economic principle.  It features John Maynard Keynes and Frederic Hayek.  Two very influential economists of their time with opposite view points.  It's a quick way to get an idea of their work and beliefs.  It uses good imagery and captures the personalities of the two economists as well.  There is also a Part 2 if you are interested and like the first one as much as I do.

     I think there are several features that could be applied to a classroom website.  I could collect different videos for my students to watch about different economic principles.  I think a search bar that is as easy to use as the one on Youtube would also be a good component to add on a classroom website.  I also like that similar video suggestions will popup and I think that would be useful.

      The new tool I visited was called Powtoon.  It is a site that allows you to animate videos and presentations.  Here is a screen shot of what I was playing around with while I was poking around the various sites.

     

     This site could have several  possible uses in the classroom.  The main one would be to spice up a presentation that you will give to your student.  It also allows teachers to make their own animated videos that they could show their class.  For some reason, students love watching videos, even if they aren't particularly interested in the subject.  This could really enhance the ability of an educator to reach their students in new ways.  As well this is something that students oculd play around with if they were to make a presentation.

Thing # 19

    I liked the discovery resources for this post.  I was only able to access Teachers Guide to Social Media and Pinterest for teachers.  The other two links were broken and I was unable to see the content that those two pages could have provided.  The Teachers Guide to Social Media provided a lot of information on how educators should just be smart when they use sites such as twitter and facebook.  This includes privacy settings and appropriateness.  Pinterest for teachers was about a site that Pinterest has set up specifically for educators.

     While I looked at the sites, I found that the best use of social networking sites for teachers is to connect with their students and their parents and to share information with one another.  A site called Edmodo was mentioned in one of the articles.  It is a way for teachers to communicate with their students on their level and it allows the teacher to communicate with parents as well.  Pinterest for teachers will be an excellent source for educators to share information that is subject and age specific to them.

      I am a member of Pinterest and LinkedIn.  Those are the communities that I am a member outside of Facebook and Twitter.  Now that I know there are others out there that could be useful I will make sure to sign up for those as well.  I found some of those on the list very appealing and I have used them before, even though I am not a member.  I use Yelp and IMDB often for restaurants and when I watch movies with my family and friends.  I found Open Source Food and Bake Space very appealing.  I love cooking and I love food and I hope to use these social networking sites for Thanksgiving.  I found these interesting as well and I will hopefully use them soon.

Thing # 18

     I already have a Twitter account.  I love using it to keep up to date with all of my friends, shows, and news.  My account is set to private so that only people who are following me can read my tweets and I have to approve of my followers, but here is a link to my Twitter account.  I kept my name as Rachel Hannabass because I wanted it to be easy for my friends to find me and I think that twitter is pretty secure.

     I looked up the #edtech hashtag and these are some of the tweets that I found about it.

     I think it was interesting to see the variety of people that were using this hastag and the different news sources and information that it led to.  Way more people were using educational hashtags than I expected and I hope that I can use some soon.  I liked the hastag search because it was easy and showed a variety of results.  The only thing I did not like is that it shows all results regardless of quality or relevance.

     It is important for educators to understand social networking sites because they can be very useful tools once they are properly understood and used.  I follow several education based organizations now such as The Tennessee Board of Education and it is useful to see the different thing that they post.  Twitter is an excellent way to stay on top of hot topics in education and tags can be used as a way to get in a conversation with other educators.
     
     The new insight I gained about twitter was that it can be used for way more than just social fun and following your friends and yes celebrities.  It can be used to stay up to date with what is popular in education and if anything controversial is happening in the area.

     There are many school applications for a social networking site like this.  Teachers can use it to follow one another.  A teacher could even start a twitter page that their students could follow.  It could talk about up coming tests and what assignments occurred in class.  This would also be a good way for parents to get involved with their students academics.  They could see that a test is coming up and help their student study.

Thing # 17

     I really enjoyed browsing around Delicious.  I started developing my own page and the tutorial was really easy to follow and to the point.  When I typed in educational technology, a wealth of information popped up from a multitude of people.  I liked the different options that were available to look at and it was interesting to see what other people said and tagged about the sites.  I am also amazed at how many times one source will get tagged for someone else's page and start trending.  For example EDyoutube had been tagged 1172 times when I last searched.

     I can definitely see this as a potential tool in the classroom.  It would be a great way to discover new ways to look up lesson plans and see what other people have experienced with those lessons.  It would also be a good way to share what you are doing in your classroom with other teachers in your school or district.  I agree that it is an easy way to create bookmarks that can be accessed anywhere, but I think that it is much more than that.  Especially because you can share them with other people and tag them into categories.

     I have already mentioned some of the ways that teachers can take advantage of social bookmarking sites previously in my blog.  They allow teachers to find new information and share with one another what works and what doesn't.  They can leave their own tags and comments.  It connects educators across the world and allows them to connect with one another.  I think the Common Craft Guys video explained it pretty well and I think it gives a good idea of how much these types of sites can benefit educators everywhere.

Thing # 16

     The start page I chose was Symabloo.  I liked it because it was easy to use and I love the big buttons to push where you would like to go.  Most of the tiles it came with were ones I use regularly anyways, so there was not a whole lot of editing.  I could not figure out how to take the ones I did not like off however and I consider them a waste of space.  However, it was easy to add new ones and they give you plenty of space to move them around and fill the spaces up.  I will probably not make it my permanent home page.  I have Google as my home page now and everything else is bookmarked.  It just takes too long load an extensive home page, and I like it being simple.

      An online calendar could be helpful to me because I can share it with people, including my students.  I could put up when test dates are going to be and then easily change it around and tell my students about it.  My biggest problem with an online calendar is that I do not have a smart phone.  I think that to get the best use out of one of them you need an android, iPhone, or tablet.  I have none of these.

      I chose Remember the Milk off of the list above.  Again, I think that this is a feature that would best be used with a smart phone.  I do think that it could be useful and I would recommend it to others.  I think that you could use almost any of the links on the list for both school and home.  As society and education gets more technologically advanced, more website like this will be needed.  Especially Zamzar.  The types of software that students use is always changing and it will be important for teachers to be able to convert their files.

Thing # 15

      I found two wikis that were really interesting and that I enjoyed immensely.  The first was ICT Magic.  I really enjoyed this wiki because it had a lot of imagination and originality put into it.  It had heaps of different information in it and was very interactive.  I really enjoyed the cookery section and the history section.  I also enjoyed that you could see the different edits that have occurred on each page and when they took place.

     The second wiki that I really liked was Resourcesforhistoryteachers.  I liked this wiki for similar reasons to ICT Magic.  This wiki is geared towards an older audience (specifically history teachers).  All the standards are laid out, and the information that pertains to each one is linked to the standard.  There are also pages designed to provide resources for different subjects.  I really liked the economics sections as well as the influential women section.

     I added my Thing # 8 blog post to the APSU 23 Things Sandbox Wiki.  It was surprisingly easy to use. I just pasted it in and edited it.  I even found some typos from my post and corrected them before I hit the save button.  It was way easier than I expected.  I could see myself using this in class for year round projects as well as in my personal life.  I am going to try to develop a project where the students add components of their lessons into the wiki.  They can change each others work and add in new pages if they wish.  They can even each have a page high lighting their work.  In my personal life, I will use this the next time I have a big trip that incorporates a lot of people. I think this will cut down on communication issues.

     The thing I found interesting about wikis are the quick way to come in and edit.  It is relatively simple.  I would be worried about the ability of people to change others work.  Sometimes, people work on an assignment for a lengthy period of time.  I know I would be a bit upset if someone just went in and changed something they did not like.

Thing # 14

For my flowchart, I chose Gliffy.  For my mind, I chose bubbl.us.  

I will try to use this tool for one of my assignments at work.  I will probably use the mind map.  I liked the layout of it much better and it was a lot easier to use than the flow chart.  It allowed easy connections to be made.  To make a new but similar bubble all you had to do was press the tab button on your keyboard.  

I would use these tools in my future classroom in several ways.  I would use them when I am presenting new ideas to students in lecture.  I would also use it in class assignments when I want the students to connect different ideas and events to one another.  They could use a mind map or flow chart to write out the evolution of economic ideology.  I would probably use a flow chart in a lecture and a mind map in an assignment.

I really enjoyed this activity.  It gave me a new way to incorporate technology into my classroom, and have my students interact with it as well.

Thing # 13

Here is my link to the Google Drive document for my blog.  I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed exploring the different tools.

Here is a Google Drive Drawing that I created for you!  It was pretty easy and fun and I used a picture that I uploaded earlier for my blog.

Students could use Google Drive for a lot of collaborative projects.  This could include each student being responsible for a different piece of the work.  As they work and see what the rest of the students are doing they can pick pieces off of one another's work and change their own.  As well students can see other people's work and add suggestions and comments on how to improve it.  I could use this in an assignment by requiring students to make a multifaceted report about a famous economist.  Each student would be responsible for their own work as well as the quality of other students.  As they work, the teacher can check up on what they are doing.

I looked at ZoHo and compared it to Google Drive.  I still prefer Google Drive.  I just think it easier to use.  There is too much going on with Zoho and it makes things a bit confusing,  As well I like Google Drive more because there are more Google users than Zoho and this would make it easier for students to use Google Drive in a collaborative project.