Thing #17 Delicious

For other activities I did in this blog, although most were completely new to me, I had at least heard of flickr and RSS feeds but I've never heard of Delicious before.  After watching the Delicious tutorial I realized that the tagging of photos I was used to from Facebook was a bit different from Delicious where I'd be tagging websites with a word or phrase.

Setting up an account with Delicious was very easy and before I knew it Delicious was added to my toolbar!  After typing in educational technology in the search bar I was flooded with results.

The two most popular sites were articles about using Facebook in the classroom and about iPads and iPod touches as resources for students, both having over a 1,000 bookmarks.  The comments I read for both articles seemed to all be very positive.

my results in Delicious!

I struggle with finding an actual benefit that Delicious would have in my future classroom because I see it more as a sight for personal use. Maybe for younger kids it may be a cool tool for them to conduct research but since I am going to be a secondary English teacher I plan to have my students use or begin to use an article database site such as JStor.

Thing #16 Getting Organized

I chose Symbaloo as my start page because I was already introduced to it in a previous class and really liked it! Symbaloo reminds me of the apps on my iPad and iPhone because they are colorful and very easy to use.  Unlike other bookmarking sites symbaloo is great for all ages because children can identify the site they wish to go on by just the icon!One of the professors I work for as a graduate assistant required all her students to create a symbaloo at the start of the year so they could easily access all the sites that they would need throughout the semester.  For my Symbaloo I dedicated the top left corner for academic sites that I will need for school and the top right for sites I go to for fun.Although I like Symbaloo I doubt I'll use it as my permanent home page because I don't go on very many sites on the internet.  I struggled to even come up with some to add to my Symbaloo...

My symbaloo!

I've never kept a digital calendar,  I'm more old fashioned and just write in one that I keep on my fridge. I prefer this method because my calendar is right where I can see it and I don't have to get on my computer to see my schedule for the day or the week.  I used google to create my calendar since I already have an account and their other services like google drive and photos were all very easy to use.  Google calender was no different! :)

my calendar for the week!

Lastly I chose to explore PDF converter because I have had trouble in the past where files I saved on my home computer could not be opened up on the ones at school. PDF converter is definitely a site I can see myself using in the future!

I recommend that people who are big internet users and access tons of sites each day try Symbaloo.  It truly is a great way to stay organized and is extremely user friendly!

Thing #15 Wikis

I've heard of Wikipedia before and used it more times than I can count, like most everyone else in the world with a computer and access to the internet, but never Wikis. I had no idea anyone could create their own Wiki about whatever they want and then others could add and edit information.  The example in the Wikis in Plain English Video was a great one because I agree that so much gets lost in translation when emailing back and forth.  I've had projects in high school go horribly wrong because a group member thought they were supposed to do one thing when in reality they were supposed to do something else. For example in a Spanish class we decided to make and bring in chicken quesadillas as part of our project and didn't have plates but double the amount of soda because of miscommunication.  I believe a Wiki page could have prevented this from happening.

Wikis remind of a google doc that you can share with others and they in turn can add and edit information.  With that being said I still prefer google docs to Wikis because there are more controls available in terms of the editing freedom you allow. For example as an instructor I may want to share docs with my class but not give them the freedom to edit anything and everything about it. In google docs you have the option to only have students view the documents or specify who can edit it. In high school I actually had a teacher who forbid us from using Wikipedia because he did not feel comfortable with us citing information from a cite that ANYONE could edit.  Allowing too much editing freedom can definitely ruin the credibility of the information you get from it.

For the apsu 23 things sandbox wiki I decided to create my own page entitled "my favorite image creations from the 23 things"  Before I could do this however, I had to set up an account which was as simple as typing in my email and clicking on the link I received in my email to verify it.  I could see myself creating a  wiki for students whenever I assign group projects to help minimize the miscommunication I spoke about earlier.

Thing #14 Flowcharts and Mindmaps

I've never been big in creating flow charts and before this exercise had never even heard the phrase "mind maps" before... I think this is due in part to the fact that I was an English major in undergrad and I feel flow charts are more suited for the sciences.

I first decided to use flowchart.com but after waiting 10 min for my invitation email, I decide to move on and use Gliffy.  On Gliffy I was able to create an entire flowchart without even creating an account and it wasn't until I went to save my flow chart was I prompted to create one.  I found Gliffy to be extremely user friendly and liked that I was able to choose the extension for my file such as PNG and JPG.  

        HOW TO MAKE BAR-B-QUE CHICKEN IN THE CROCK POT

my creation in Gliffy! I made it very simple because I wanted it to be easy to understand

Next I went on mindmeister.com to find out exactly what mind mapping is.  However I was quickly turned off from the site when I saw a variety of different prices for the mind mapping software. Although I noticed they had a free trial, I did not want to get caught in a situation where I would begin to be charged once the trial ended so I left the site. I then decided to go to bubbl.us and was relieved to find that it looked similar in appearance to the very easy to use Gliffy.com. I actually found bubble.us easier to use than Gliffy since all I had to do was press TAB to create a new bubble!

Although I have never found a use for flowcharts or mind maps useful as a student I still believe I will make a effort to use them in my future classroom. Not everyone learns or studies in the same way that I do, so even though I don't benefit from flowcharts  and mind maps my students very well might!

I definitely prefer flowcharts to mind maps because I believe they are more organized and easy to understand, however I do believe mind maps serve as a useful way to get your ideas down on paper.  For example if I assigned students to write a paper on a heroic journey, a mind map would be helpful for students to add the elements of a heroic journey and use connectors to illustrate the ones that are related.

Thing #13 Google Drive

click here to link to my blogpost made in google drive!

Not only do I THINK Google Drive is a great tool for collaborative learning but its one that I KNOW for sure I'll use.  Google Drive will make group projects far more easier for students to accomplish.  No longer will students have to find times to meet with one another in person because they will be able to connect with each other from wherever they are!  If one group member finds an interesting website they can share it with their fellow members with a few clicks of their mouse.

A creation made in Google Drive using the drawing tools!

After exploring Zoho I quickly found it to be a site that was not suited to my individual needs.  It seems the site is better suited for businessmen and women.  For example I have no need to use Pulse, which track sales either now as a student or in the future when I become a teacher.

Thing #12 The Power of Google

I decided to first play around with Google Trends, because I've heard about it before but never used it.  On Google Trends the two hottest searches for the day (September 10, 2013) were Sons of Anarchy and NASCAR.  I noticed however, that these "trends" of the day were only for the United States so I decided to change the country to Australia.  For the exact same day I found that the two hottest searches in Australia were Under the Dome (a tv show) and Miley Cyrus.

I next decided to view the trends of the search "Michael Jackson" I limited the years of my search from 2004-present (the site does not allow you to see trends prior to 2004) and wasn't surprised to find that the number of searches not only spiked but peaked the year of his death, 2009.  I only performed this search to test the accuracy of the site....


Next I searched Justin Bieber....these were the results

As expected no one even knew of his existence until 2009.  There were literally 0 searches until June of 2009

Lastly I decided to search "education reform" and was saddened to find that the number of searches of these two terms has been in a fairly gradual decline as pictured below.

I guess it true that people are starting to care less and less about education....

Other interesting hot searches from September 10, 2013, broken down into categories,
are pictured below
                                                                     

 

I never knew google had any type of photo sharing program and because manipulating photos with flickr was so much fun I decided to check out Google Plus Photos.  The process of uploading my photos to Google Plus was very similar to the uploading process on Facebook where they ask you to tag the photo and you have the option to share it.  I then decided to edit my photo and loved all the options they gave!  I could have spent hours manipulating photos and know for sure I'll be back on this site!

I think that Google Trends would prove very useful in a History classroom because students could could literally learn the history/popularity of any term from 2004-present!  Again I still don't see much benefit in a photo manipulation site like Google Plus Photos other than in an Art class...

Thing #11 Finding Good Feeds

I may not have created a circle of the wise in the conventional sense of the word but I definitely think I chose blogs that will keep me entertained and even to some extent inspired. I have NEVER kept up with blogs in the past so I didn't even know where to start when it came time for me to choose which ones to add to my feedly account.  I first began with the suggestion to check out the Edublogs's award winners and decided to subscribe to freetechforteachers.com because I liked the layout and the first couple of posts I read.  And also, perhaps most importantly because all the technology featured is FREEEEEEEE!

I was hoping that all I would have to do to subscribe to this blog would be clicking that now familiar orange RSS icon on the page but was unable to find my reader (feedly) listed in the drop down choices.  I ended up having to go into my feedly account and search for the blog there and then click +add content.  It wasn't very difficult to do for this first blog but after subscribing to 4 other blogs and then repeating this same process, it got extremely tedious!

The next blog I found from an earlier "Thing" post, called Its not all Flowers and Sausages, which is a very candid and heartfelt written by an oftentimes very frustrated teacher.  This is probably the most unusually written, but entertaining blog I subscribed to.

The 3 other blogs I subscribed to I found directly from my feedly account.  I simply typed in what I was looking for example I subscribed to a cake blog called HalfBaked, which I found by just typing in
"baking."