Whew! One Last Thing!

For the most part I really enjoyed learning about the different resources available online. I loved Flickr the most. Now, I am slightly addicted thanks to this thing. It was a great course overall but I didn't like how everything was so fast paced. I felt that there were too many projects and so little time. I don't mind blogging but it definitely stressed me out along with other projects that needed to be done. I think this class was so beneficial because of all the resources that were given and shared. It blew my mind to see all the websites that can benefit education. I somehow knew they were out there, just didn't know how to access them. I am going to be saving all the information from this class so that I can apply what I know to my future classroom!

Thing #23 Creative commons

In February of 2006, Stephen Abram posted an article titled "43 Things I Might Want to Do This Year". It was aimed to target ones progress in learning new information. Abram mainly looks at learning how to manipulate the latest technology and to be able to use it on a daily basis. This article has been credited to the motivation for APSU's 23 Things. As I browsed through Abrams article, I saw many of the same tasks.
The beneficial part of Creative Commons is to allow me to understand the limits on how I can use other individuals works within legal copyright boundaries. When I use other individuals works in my report papers, I need to remember to give credit to the works that I use in my classroom as well.

Thing # 22, Podcasts

My podcast:
Spanish Podcasts for Beginners with Maria Fernandez.

http://podcast.com/show/17660/Spanish-Podcasts-for-Beginners-with-Maria-Fernandez/

I looked around on Podcastdirectory.com, but honestly found this podcast at podcast.com. Easy enough right? These podcasts would be a great way for the students to take a day to just listen and learn at the same time. I would use a podcast like this on a day where I wanted to just give the kids a break from writing and lecture. Plus, they can go back to the podcast in case they forgot something that was important.

Thing # 21 Animoto

I really enjoyed using Animoto. I was really easy. I am once again addicted to something else. This website is great for personal use but could be used for my classroom as well. My students could use if for projects or just personal use. Also, if I wanted to send parents a video at the end of the year all of what the students did this would be a great website to use!

Thing #20, Youtube

I had to spend some time searching through the videos on Youtube, to actually find one that was appropriate for students. The best thing about Youtube is also the worst. Anyone can post a video and there is a HUGE variety of what you can find; including videos with content that is dowright wrong.
Here is a great video I found for teaching my students basic Spainish:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XU8rnRUQqw&feature=related
This plays the alphabet song.

Thing #19, Other social networks.

I chose to explore Flixter. I love movies of all types, so this was right up my alley. This site would be a great way for me to find some great, safe, and educational movies about the Spanish language for my students to learn by. This will also save me time so that I won't have to surf the Internet looking for these videos. I like that I can search movies not only for my personal use but also for my classroom. I know previously we had discussed in class about copyright and teachers getting into trouble. If I saw an educational program on television, this is a great resource to check to see if the program was available on DVD or video.

Thing #18, Social Networking.

Well this one was easy, I already had a Facebook and MySpace account. Here is my Facebook account:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/profile.php?id=63700190

I feel it is important to know how to roam through these networks, so that the teacher is able to know a little more about their students and also allow the students to know a little more about the teacher. Of course some very important insight, is to not put anything up on that site that you don't want your students or parents of the students to know. Once it is up on the site, the whole world can see it! I like Facebook the best and they have the best security as well as some real fun applications; like FarmTown, iLike, and other games and media applications. I guess a good classroom activity could be for the students to organize a study group through Facebook. (Parental agreement allowing). Also students could find other students from around the world which is a great idea especially when trying to learn Spanish.

Thing # 17 Del.icio.us

I can completely see how amazing this site would be for my classroom, especially for Spanish. I won't have to search for my bookmarked page because it is separated by relevant information, and I can easily access the websites that I found to be most useful. This tool is really exciting because it is a great way to expand the use of the Internet in the classroom. I won't have to spend hours upon hours searching for useful websites. This way I can go to others bookmarked pages and use them as my own. It is so easy and so organized. I love it! The best part is clicking on others resources and using them as my own! So great! I have already started my account and organized everything that was related to Flickr and the different websites you can use to edit photos.

Thing #16. Organization

I'm not out of the norm. Just like millions of others, I have become a Google junkie. I have my permanent home page set on iGoogle. I have my calendar set on it and all of the important dates, such as appointments, assignment due dates, work schedule, paydays, and bill due dates are all set on it. I also have birthdays that I would maybe forget set on my iGoogle. I can basically do everything on iGoogle, and can see why it has become the mecca of Internet search engines as well as web applications. These guys at Google are amazing and just keep coming up with ways to make life easier.

Thing #15 Wikis

The good aspect of the Wikis, was how easy it was. The video I watched was so true. All you have to do is click edit or save. What a great way to interact and learn new information. The only problem that I encountered was I had to look around for how to post my picture, but once I found it, I had such an easy time. It would be a good way to do group projects, allowing the students to add input or additional information necessary. The only problem I have with wikis is if people post information that isn't true. Most of the information is based off of people's knowledge and not fact. Other than that, it was a great tool to use and will be helpful for my classroom in the future.

Thing #14. The Flow!!!!!

I once had difficulty with flowcharts. However, after browsing through Gliffy and Bubbl.us, I was able to become more familiar with them. As I looked through the flow charts and the mind map, I seemed to get the feeling that flowcharts are better for, well, how something flows. It describes how to do something, such as baking a cake or setting up a tent. It organizes things in order or steps. Mind maps seem to search and organize different things by the relationships they have within each other. A possible example would be Drug interactions to ensure that a certain drug taken for a cold would not have a bad reaction to a medication for High Blood Pressure, or something similar to that. A good way I could use this in a classroom would be to possibly make a pinata or a dish for a Spanish day in the classroom and to use a flowchart. For a mind map we could find different word relationships in the Spanish language.

Thing #13 Zoho

I enjoyed playing around with Zoho writer and will actually use it in the future for my term papers. It was surprisingly easy and user friendly. Also I was able to accesss what I created and stored right in the same place and managing it all was fairly easy! It barely took 2 minutes to get registered and as a broke college student, it being free is a total bonus. Using this for a person who is not computer savy like me, was so simple. Everything I did just flowed. I did a spreadsheet and a paper. I loved how easy it was. As a matter of fact, I wrote this blog on Zoho and pasted it on the blog site.

Thing #12, Google's Cool Tools

I absolutely love Google and all the tools it has to offer! There are so many different ways to use Google. I love my iGoogle, because I am able to have multiple games, famous quotes, movie trailers, and all catered to my personal tastes and nothing that I don't want to waste my time with. I love that I can pick different designs on my page. My favorite part of iGoogle is that everything you want can be put on one page and it is only a click away. I also played with Google Alerts. It is cool to be able get the latest updates on news headlines sent to my email, so I don't have to search around for them, which saves me some time.

Thing #11 Feeds

Being new to RSS, I was confused on how to productively navigate through the many RSS feeds. As another student mentioned, Google is just easy for anything, which I found as a blessing. The feeds werent really hard to navigate, they just seemed overloaded with different options. I also liked Topix.net because they had the different genres in different tabs. (i.e. Local, US, politics, entertainment, etc.) Otherwise, I had a difficult time navigating through all of these others and honestly am not feeling like I was successful at "thing #11".

Thing #10, RSS

I have always wondered what the orange ICON meant, and when I learned about RSS, I was surprised!! I very often refresh news sites to get updates and had NO idea that RSS solved all that hassle!! RSS could be very beneficial for my personal use and for the class use if we are wanting to keep up on a current event that we are trying to learn about. Instead of going back to refresh the site, all of the updates will just be fed into my RSS subscription! This is such a great technology that surprisingly I have not found out about until just now! What a great and convenient way to keep up with latest headlines!

Thing # 9 Generators

http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/909/madeatwwwspiffytextcomf.jpg

http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/3643/madeatwwwspiffytextcom1.jpg

I made images from the Image Chef and the Happy Face Generator website. The Happy face site had a Logo Generator that I used instead of happy faces. I just felt the happy face thing was kinda lame. I had a lot of fun choosing through the Image Chef site and really liked the final "heart" collage I made. The banners that I made were also fun. These would be great for my classroom during Holiday projects. They can be educational while fun. I can have them make different Holiday messages in Spanish and find a corresponding shape with the messages. The site had numerous shapes that I was able to put the words in.