Thing #20

YouTube and Beyond

When I read thing #20 I knew exactly what I wanted to share on my blog. Although knowing exactly what I was going to post I still spent over an hour watching videos. YouTube is like a bag of potato chips, you can't just watch one! So now that I have totally lost the last hour to watching videos I now can get back to this post. 

The clip I chose is a shortened version of the video I find so motivating and powerful. The video clip is of Dr. Randy Pausch and his "Last Lecture".  I highly suggest that if you have the time that you watch the full video on YouTube. I can not watch this without crying but at the end I also find myself motivated. I will use what Dr. Pausch has said to motivate my own students to do their very best. I only hope that I can do Dr. Pausch justice by motivating my students like he has motivated so many others. I think that this video is a little too much for elementary students but I think it is great for older students especially seniors about to embark on their next journey in life. 

I think that YouTube and TeacherTube are great resources that should be used in the classroom at any grade level. I think short little video clips that reinforce a lesson that is being taught is a great tool. Students love videos and it is a great way to grab their attention in the beginning of a lesson or as a summary to a lesson. I know as a student I was elated when the teacher rolled the TV cart into the classroom! 

I tried GameClassroom as my other video application. I thought this was great for the classroom because it has different grade levels from K-6 to choose from. The website had tabs for videos, worksheets, lessons for math and ELA. It seems like a great resource to be added to any K-6 classroom for independent or pair work on the computer. The only thing I wish it had was tools for science and social studies as well but it looks like it is more geared toward Common Core with Math and ELA. Overall I am impressed with this website and videos for students.

Thing #19

Beyond Facebook

Some of the tips that were given for teachers about social networking sites are kind of "no brainers". I would never put anything up on Facebook that I wouldn't want my 90 year old grandmother to see, because yes at 90 she is loves Facebook. I think the same goes for any other sights. Students today are little tiny sleuths and they will find their teachers on sights. I don't think that this is something to be afraid of and completely swear off social networking sites though. I have found that the teaching community as a whole is very supportive towards each other on these sites. 

I really liked the Classroom 2.0 Ning site where I found a group http://www.classroom20.com/group/elementaryschool20 that I would like to follow. In fact a recent post by someone on the site was talking about Twitter and uses of Twitter in the elementary classroom. No one has posted anything yet but now I have an RSS on that particular topic because I would be interested in how teachers now are integrating Twitter into their classrooms. I feel impressed with myself that I am using that I have learned in this class already to further my own knowledge. 

As a non-teacher social network I liked the Tasty Kitchen site. It is linked to the pioneer woman which I also really like as well. I'm not sure when I came across the pioneer woman but I have found her to be amazing and I think I will enjoy Tasty Kitchen as well. 

I love love LOVE Pinterest! I think I spend more time on Pinterest than I do anything else. I can spend hours just looking at different things. I do need to spend more time organizing my pins though. I also have an Instagram account but I don't use it very often. I'm not sure if it is considered a social networking site but I really enjoy things that teachers put up on teacherspayteachers.com. I have heard many times throughout this program, "Why reinvent the wheel?" This is a great resource for graphic organizers, activities and themes for the classroom that teachers make, some are free and other you have to pay for which I don't mind at all. I think if a teacher spends the time to create something that will help other teachers than, why not get some extra cash for it? We all know that we aren't going into the teaching profession for the paycheck! These are great resources for teachers that I will for sure use when I have my own classroom.

Thing #18

Twitter

I swore to myself that I would never be on Twitter, but then came Thing #18 in this technology class and here I am an official "Twitter-er". I never really cared much about hashtags and I think people go a little off the deep end hashtagging everything, I mean why else would they make an SNL skit about hashtags, with every other word being hashtag. It seems a little crazy to me that people want to tweet every single thing that they are thinking of for their followers to see. I really don't care what famous people are thinking or the nasty comments people tweet back and forth about each other. 

With that being said, to set up an account it was really quite simple. The website took you step by step and had me set up 10 people to follow. I chose teacher sites to follow since this exercise is about using Twitter for educational purposes and not to see what Taylor Swift has to say. I searched Teacher and came up with pretty interesting people/organizations to follow. Part of the reason I never was interested in joining Twitter is I had no idea that it could be used for education. I thought it was just a place that people could talk/complain about their every day comings and goings. I can see after signing up for education purposes that Twitter can be useful for teachers. I think that Twitter can keep teachers updated on information a lot faster with less than 140 characters. I think that it is probably a good thing for teachers to at least know about so there isn't such a gap between teachers and students, more so I think in high school than elementary school. 

I'm not sure if I would really use this in an elementary classroom with students so much. I might use it to keep in communication with parents much like a blog with a classroom specific hashtag that only my student's parents would have such as #mrsSomers3rdgradeclass2014. This way if the students had projects or there was information that I needed to get out to the parents who were followers I would be able to instantly notify them about the happenings in the classroom. As a teacher I think I would try to stay up to date with some of the hashtags for my own learning purposes. Overall not a terrible experience with Twitter, not nearly as painful as I thought it was going to be. 

Here is my twitter account

https://twitter.com/CandicePS813

Thing #17

Del.icio.us

The tutorial video really helped me understand Delicious since I have never heard of this before. I am feeling a little overwhelmed after learning about Delicious, Digg and Stumbleupon. I think that delicious is only slightly user friendly than the other two, although Digg didn't seem terrible. I will need to play around with this a little more, after watching the tutorial it seemed a lot easier to use but when I went to search for educational technology I was getting things posted from 2007, which we all know seven years ago in a technological world is ancient. Even MacBooks are considered "antique" after five years and you can't even get parts for them at the Apple store. I like the fact that this is different from bookmarks because then if I am not on my own computer I can still save websites that I find without needing to be on my own computer. I did find a tag about 100 websites that will make you smarter. I went down to the section about science and clicked on wired science. I was hoping it would have been a little more educational but it was interesting. The website has current information about the polar vortex and other current events. 

I can see how this would be useful for teachers to stay up to date on the most current teaching techniques and the tags make it easier to organize everything. I liked the social aspect in theory. You still need to rely on people to tag things the way would would tag them yourself. I did like how there was a follow button, I think that would be very useful as a beginning teacher to have access to other more seasoned teachers website that they deemed as useful. I think I will need more classroom experience before I know which websites and activities are helpful in the classroom and which ones are not. Once I get the hang of the website I hope to find teachers that have useful websites to use during my first year. I think is it a great way to share ideas with teachers across the country and not just the ones what teach in the school that I will be teaching at in the future. I am not sure how this tool would be used in the classroom for student use. I think that this might be a little over the heads of elementary school students. I think that I would only use this in the classroom to get websites off of it that I have already tagged.  

Thing #16

Get Organized

I first clicked on Ustart for my start page and I chose my horoscope, google drive, and tasks. There were a lot of options that I could have on my start page that I have no interest in such as video games, movies and stocks. I wasn't really impressed with this start page. It does have a calendar, weather and a place for gmail which made it easy to access everything from one page. It kind of reminded me of our APSU OneStop page that has all the information we need on one page. I'm not sure if I would ever make this my home page. I have a MacBook and I am used to how that is set up and I don't think I would have a start page in addition to the widgets on my computer. 

I liked the name of the tool rememberthemilk so I tried it out. Not a big fan on signing up for things even if they are for free. I feel like it is just an extra step and extra e-mails in my mailbox that I need to spend more time to delete, making me less productive. I wonder if I had done it on my phone first if I would have needed to "sign up". I always make "to do" lists for myself on a daily basis. In fact the first thing on my to do list is to make a to do list, that way I can cross it off after I make the list. I feel like something is lost when it is on my phone or computer. I enjoy the actual act of crossing things off my list. I have tried other apps on my phone that were to do lists. One actually marked things in red if I didn't get them done from the list. That app was quickly deleted. I find it a lot easier to write my to do lists on paper than on my phone or computer. I don't think I will be doing anymore to do lists like this. I liken it to reading an e-book compared to an actual book. I need to physically turn pages and I need to physically cross things off of my lists. 

My other tool I chose was the mint.com, I feel like this would be a good tool for me to use. Once again you need to sign up for it but sometimes I fee like I need something to show me where my money is going. I feel like one day I have money and then the next day I have no idea what I spent my money on. This tool displays the information for you in pie charts and in bar graphs. Maybe if I keep track of my spending I will get my credit cards paid off this year.  The only downside I see from this tool is that it has all my financial information on it, if it were to get into the wrong hands, but then again everything is on line and if someone really wanted my information, they would get it.

I think the tool that would be most useful would be an online calendar. Whenever I have observed teachers in their meetings, they are constantly planning things for their students, whether its testing, computer times, guest speakers or everyday activities. I feel like I am going to need some type of calendar to keep myself organized. I would like to see what other teachers use as far as calendars goes before I commit to one. 

Thing #15

Wiki

I really had no idea that you could make your own wiki page. The little tutorial on our APSU 23 things page was really helpful in explaining how you can use a wiki (not that I will ever go camping). I frequently use wikipedia and have the app on my phone. The only other time I have heard anything with wiki in it was a few years ago when the news was reporting about "wikileaks". I know wiki means quick or quickly and I can see why they chose the work wiki for all these pages. It is a fast way to communicate back and forth between multiple people. 

I looked at a few of the wikis that were provided and I really liked the educational origami wiki, I liked how it had information on Bloom's at each level. If I were to become a member I could add things to these pages based on what worked in my classroom for the different levels of Bloom's. I liked how the wiki was set up and it seems very useful. For my APSU 23 Things Sandbox wiki, I added an entry about Thing #14. I feel that I could actually use flow charts and mind maps in the classroom for reviews and for learning centers. I was however a little confused as to the "appropriate page" part. I had a hard time finding it. It seems that most people just posted to the front page. 

This wiki experience was an interesting one. Once I got the hang of it, it wasn't too bad. I had a little bit of an issue trying to figure out how to edit the page, took me a while to figure out I had to join before I edited the page. I still a little cautious about wiki's because anyone can delete things that others have spent time on and posted to the wiki. Plus I feel like it would need to be monitored by the teacher to make sure nothing inappropriate was posted on the wiki. With that said, I feel like it would be a great way to organize things for the classroom, for students and parents to see. Perhaps in addition to the classroom blog, put the year's schedule on a class wiki so parents can what has been covered and what needs to still be covered, or even a classroom supply list that parents can add things to or take things away like the tutorial with the camping trip supplies. I'm not sure if schools still do class trips, but when I was in school we did and we always needed parent chaperones, this would also be a quick way parents could add themselves to a chaperone list for a trip. I'm not sure how young elementary school students would really utilize wikis, it seems a little over their heads but I could be wrong. I will need to find out how tech savvy my students are once I get into a classroom.

Thing #14

Flow Charts and Mind Maps

When I was a student, I was never one for pre-planning anything out. I wish that I had bubbl.us and Gliffy back then. I always struggled with keeping my ideas organized when writing a paper. Teachers always encouraged us to take a few minutes to read an essay test question, and write an outline but no one ever really taught us how to really use them to our advantage. I really liked using Gliffy, it gave a little tutorial on how to use the application. I liked these flow charts because it gave the user the freedom to put the arrows to the boxes anywhere you wanted and to change it as my thought process changed. I didn't try flowchart.com because I didn't feel like waiting for the invitation. I think they probably loose a lot of potential users because of their wait time. For mind maps I really liked bubbl.us, it was very user friendly and great for brainstorming. I am also a big fan of all the changing colors of the bubbles. I think it adds a nice touch to the visual aspect of the mind map as well as being able to see ideas on different levels based on color. 

I would like to teach elementary school so I think that these tools would be great to implement at a young age so when they get older they are able to use flow charts and mind maps on their own when they get into middle school and high school. Depending on what grade I eventually teach I think that this would be a great activity but need to be teacher directed, whole class type of a lesson. Using these with heavy scaffolding for upper elementary school students would be useful as well. After scaffolding with upper elementary school students, I think bubble.us would be great for brainstorming ideas about a  group project that students would do. I think that these tools would work best in a small controlled setting for students to work with in pairs or in small groups after whole class instruction.