My Journey Only Begins From Here!

I enjoyed completing this program.  I found some very useful tools, like LiveBinders, TeacherPop, and Flow Chart makers.  I also learned how to use tools that I have already been using to help me in the classroom, like Facebook, animoto, Pandora, Project Playlist, and YouTube.  This was a creative way to get us looking at these tools, and blogging about our experiences for us to look back on later, and for others to see what we have learned.  I feel like I have a lot of useful tools under my belt now to help me to be a better, more organized teacher.  I have now crossed this bridge, and now I can move on to the next part of my journey!  Here we go!

Thing Twenty-Three! Creative Commons

Before I took this class I was not up to date on copyright laws.  I wouldn't hesitate to take a picture off of google and put it on a powerpoint.  I now know that I can't do that.  There is, however, a solution.  I can go to Creative Commons to find pictures and things that I can use for free without having to worry about acting illegally.  I can use this in the classroom for graphics on powerpoints or other presentations.  I can also use Creative Commons to teach my students about Copyright Law, and where to find free materials to use.

Thing Twenty-Two! LiveBinders!

At first, my impression of Livebinders was not that great.  I thought it looked confusing at first glance.  Then once I started putting together binders, I realized that it isn't that bad.  I like being able to categorize the binders so all of my sources for that particular topic are right there.  My binders that I made were called Education 3040, Thanksgiving Fun Facts, and Christmas Activities.

Education 3040

I would use this in the classroom to organize sources and keep websites containing activities that I would like to use in my classroom together.  LiveBinders is a great way for teachers to stay organized, and to keep them from fumbling around looking for sources and wasting valuable class time.

Thing Twenty-One! Animoto!

Make your own slideshow with music at Animoto.

I love making videos like this so animoto was fun to play with!  Christmas is coming up so I decided to make a video of some of my favorite Christmas memories.  It was very easy to use.  It takes you through it step by step and does most of the work for you.  All you have to do is make a few decisions on music and pictures, and you have a video!  I would definitely use this in the future!

Thing Twenty! Youtube it!

Youtube is a great tool to use in the classroom!  Videos can be great to use for visual learners, and they can break up the monotony of a lecture.  I found a great video of a fourth grade class learning division in a new way!




I chose this video because I thought it was a great way to get students excited about something as painful as division!  This was so creative, and you can tell that the students had a great time with this video!  This could be shown for inspiration, and to help other students learn the steps of division.

Thing Nineteen! There's More Than Just Facebook!

Visit TeacherPop

I am now a member of TeacherPop!  It looks like a teacher version of Facebook.  I think this could be a great communication tool!  It seems like it is easy to use and navigate and it isn't too time consuming to upload things to it.  I will definitely use this!

I was already a member of Project Playlist.  I have had a Project Playlist account for a long time!  It is a music sharing site where you can create and sort playlists.  I had my Christmas playlist, and of course my normal playlists.  This could be useful in the classroom to find appropriate music to play and to be able to organize the music by what it is used for.  It's free, so that's a plus!

Thing Eighteen! Facebook

Facebook can be such a helpful tool when it comes to communicating!  Facebook allows you to create groups so that you can communicate privately with several people at once.  You can make a calendar or create an event on Facebook and send invites to certain people so that they can stay in the loop about what is going on.
Teachers need to know how social networking works because it can be a very useful tool, or it can be very dangerous.  Teachers should utilize all of the tools available on these sites, but they should also be mindful about what they put on their pages because they are public.
I have been on Facebook for years, so I am most comfortable using it over Twitter.  I have never understood the way Twitter works. A key factor in being an effective teacher is being an effective communicator, and the more tools that you provide for communication, the more they will be utilized. Teachers can use social networking sites to communicate with each other or to communicate with parents.
There is more to Facebook than meets the eye!
https://www.facebook.com/emily.rittenberry

Thing Seventeen! Delicious Tagging

I had a little trouble getting this to work the way I wanted it to, but I finally got there.   I can see how it could be a great tool.  All you have to do is type in the topic that you want to know about and everything tagged with that topic will come up.  You can also tag sites yourself so that they are all right there.  For teachers this could be a great tool for resources for lessons, and a way to find resources for students to use!  

Pinterest is around the same idea, but to me, much easier to use!  You can see pictures of what you are looking for, and there are so many unique ideas that I would have never thought of otherwise!  

I love how I am gaining all of these tools that I would have probably never known about otherwise! 

Thing Sixteen! A Helping Hand

I chose iGoogle as my startup page.  I chose iGoogle because I use Google all the time, and it is a tool that I am familiar with.  I really like how you can remove widgets that you don't want, and move them around in the order that you want them.  I love customizing everything, so I loved how I could put a picture at the top of my iGoogle page!  I have made my iGoogle my permanent homepage.

Online calendars can be useful, not only for keeping events in organized and making reminders, but an online calendar can be more safe from being erased than one made into a computer.  If your computer crashes, you lose the calendar that was on the computer.  If you have an online calendar, your information is still there, and you can access it from any computer.

Online to-do lists, to me, are more work than they are worth.  I would much rather write my to-do list down so I can feel the satisfaction of physically crossing items off.

I would recommend iGoogle to everyone!  You can have all of the information that is important to you in one place, and it can pop up as soon as you hit your internet browser!  This can be useful at home and in the classroom!  You can use the news provided by iGoogle to discuss current events with your students.

Thing Fifteen! Wiki What?!

I liked the Wiki Sandbox a lot!  I think it would be a great tool for students and parents to communicate and work together to make the classroom a better place.  It was very easy to navigate and to edit pages and add images.  I like how creative you can be with it as far as changing the font color and adding photos.  I like the idea of having something like this where students and parents can express creativity and ideas, and it is yet another way to keep the lines of communication open, and to keep the great ideas flowing!

Thing Fourteen! Go With the Flow!

Flow charts are a great way to show the flow of events to students.  The tools on the 23 Things page would all be great to use! I chose Gliffy and bubbl.us.

Gliffy was an easy tool  to use to create flow charts.  It gave you a template and you could just fill in the information that you wanted.  You could move things around if you wanted to to make the chart look the way you wanted.

bubbl.us was my favorite of the two!  I had never heard of a mind map before, but I like them a lot!  The mind map was more fun to create than the flow chart.  You could connect ideas together and make it look the way that you want it to.  I thought that the mind map was more fun and more simple to create.

Thing Thirteen! Zoho & Google Docs

When trying to use Zoho I was a bit confused.  It seemed a lot more complicated than Google Docs.  I used Google Docs in my high school government class, and I thought it was a very useful tool!  We used it to turn in papers, and the teacher was able to put comments on our work for us to see so that we could improve our writing.  I was not a fan of Zoho at all.

I would definitely use Google Docs in my classroom!  Students can create a free account and create all kinds of projects, and be able to share them with myself, or fellow classmates so that they can collaborate on their work. Google Docs would be great when the students write a story or a paper, because they can see the feedback that they get, whether it be from me or another student. Google Docs is fairly straightforward, where I thought Zoho required more experimentation to figure out what to do. Given the choice, I would choose Google Docs over Zoho.
Google Docs Document

Thing Twelve! There is More to Google!

I set up an iGoogle and a Google Calendar.  iGoogle was so great!  I liked how I could pick what I wanted to show up on my iGoogle homepage!  I chose entertainment and news, two things that I love to keep up on!  I like that when I get on my computer, that will pop up so I can get caught up on the latest, and also not having a bunch of random things that I don't care about taking up room on my homepage.

Google Calendar is a great tool!  I can add events to make sure that I remember them, and I can set up reminders for a certain time before the event takes place.  This is great for me because I am a very forgetful person!  If I don't write it down, I more than likely won't remember it.  This would be great for keeping up with classroom and school events and making reminders for when I need to have different things done.

https://www.google.com/calendar/render?tab=wc
http://www.google.com/ig

Thing Eleven! Searching for Blogs

It is important for teachers to be able to get to information as easy as possible.  I found that the Google Blogs search was much easier than all of the others, and I just prefer Google anyway.  I didn't like the Technorati search very much.  It just seemed like it was more difficult to use to me.  I really only found blogs explaining the 23 things and what you're supposed to do to complete them.  I found one blog that was about a Web 2.0 conference and the author of the blog was presenting there, which was pretty cool!

Thing Ten! RSS Feeds

At first, I was honestly a little confused about this whole RSS thing.  The more I played around with it, I was able to see how it could be useful.  I liked that the feeds that I chose all showed up in one place, so that I could see updates without having to go to each one individually.  Teachers could use this in the classroom to show students current events, or if the class is keeping up with certain blogs they can all be shown right there.  Teachers can use it for themselves in the same way as they would in the classroom.  I don't know that this would be something that I would definitely use in my classroom, but I know it's there if I ever need it!

Thing Nine! Getting Creative with Generators!

http://www.happyfacegenerator.com/

I used the smiley face generator for this one.  This took me a little while to get it to look just the way I wanted.  I couldn't get all of the text on the sign at first, but I eventually got it all there.  This would be fun for an elementary classroom!  A smiley face could greet them with a special message every morning when they get to school.

                            
                                                        http://www.imagechef.com/
This one came from imagechef.  I really goofed off with this, but it could definitely be used for serious things, too!  This was super easy to make.  It was just a matter of uploading a photo and the site does the rest!  I could use this to award students for various things, such as doing his/her homework all week, or having perfect behavior.  I could print these off and post them in the classroom.  This site has so many different things that you can make, it could be used for so many different things!  A very good tool!

Thing Eight! Flickr Mashups

The Flickr mashups were fun!  I have always loved those pictures that have names spelled out of random objects, so I jumped at the chance to play around with this one!  I think that this particular mashup would be very good for teachers in the elementary level!  I would use this to spell out each student's first name and make them into cute name tags.  This would be a good alternative to the same old name tags that we all probably had in elementary school.

The other mashups that you could use to make mosaics and collages would be great for students use on projects.  They could find pictures of historical events or they could even use it on a introductory project and use pictures of themselves or family members to introduce themselves to the class. Tools like these are great for bringing the creativity out in students! The possibilities are endless!

Thing Seven! Flickr

I decided to make an account on Flickr and upload my own photos.  I actually really liked Flickr!  It was very easy to use.  I would definitely use this for my personal photos to keep them organized.  I would probably make it more private if I added more, though.  I'm not sure I like the whole world being able to see me.  I use Instagram on for pictures that I take on my phone, and I of course use Facebook, but those are the only photo sharing sites that I have used up until now.  I think Flickr could possibly be used in the classroom to pull up picture for something like a history lesson.  You could keep your pictures organized so that when it came time to show them, they are easy to get to.  Now for the pictures I chose to upload to Flickr!  Again, I want this blog to reflect me, so I chose pictures of the people that mean the most to me.

This is my boyfriend, Eddie, and I at Mount Rushmore this past summer!

This is my mom, me, and my Aunt Sharron on our farm!

My dad and I during a trip to Wyoming!

My brother, Josh, his girlfriend, Lindsey, and I at Grants Farm in St. Louis, MO!

My Uncle Bill, Aunt Sharron, and I on my 20th birthday!

My Paw-Paw and I on my 20th birthday! We lost my Nanny in 2007, so we try to spend as much time with him as we can.

These people are my life!  I wouldn't trade a thing for them!

Thing Six! Pandora Internet Radio

I chose to explore Pandora.  I have Pandora on my iPad and my iPhone and I use it all the time!  Pandora is a way to listen to music for free.  You choose an artist or a genre and there are stations already set up containing music from the artist you chose, and artists like them, or artists under the genre you chose.  I have a lot of country radio on mine!  Pandora could be useful in the classroom.  Students sometimes find it relaxing to have music playing as they are taking a test or doing classwork.  Of course, this would have to be school appropriate music.  If the class is learning about other cultures, Pandora could be used to play the music from that culture so that the students could experience what those people listen to.  I would also possibly use it for fun, like when the class has holiday parties.  Being a music lover, I could definitely see Pandora being used in my classroom!

http://www.pandora.com/

Thing Five! Where Education is Going

I had no idea how Web 2.0 worked, much less what it was.  After reading about it, I see Web 2.0 as education moving forward into the future.  We live in a world full of technology and tools that are at our disposal, so why not use them?  Web 2.0 is about utilizing these tools to make our classrooms a more effective place.  We also have to think about our students when we think about Web 2.0.  Most children today can work a computer like it's nobody's business.  Computers are also something that most children enjoy using, and they spend plenty of time in front of them.  Why not let them use something that they can have fun with, and teach them something along the way!  It is important for more teachers to become familiar with the tools included in Web 2.0 because this is definitely where education is going!

Thing Four! Speak Up!

Speaking up on other blogs is very important! As teachers we need to stick together and help one another out!  Let's face it, we all like to know that someone out there is listening to what we have to say.  While we like it when people agree with us, that isn't always going to be the case.  The great thing about when people speak up when they don't agree with you, is it may cause you to see something that you didn't see before!  Sharing thoughts on a topic demonstrates that there is more than one way to look something.  One teacher may have great results with an activity that he/she tried, but another teacher may try it and the students weren't as responsive.  It's good to share these things so that other people aren't discouraged.   I chose to comment on these 5 blogs:
1. Blair's 23 Things
2. Teaching is Not for Sissies
3. M Donahue's 23 Things
4. 23 Clark Things...Words to Live By :)
5. Ava's 23 Things at 32
I chose them because I liked their posts and the way that they worded things.  I am also following these blogs: Cool Cat Teacher Blog and Dane's Education Blog.
My comments all went with what the post was about.  I said "Thank you for sharing!" when a story was shared, or I would say that I felt the same way when someone talked about having fun creating their blog.
Keep the comments going everyone!

Thing Three! Blogs in the Classroom? Who Knew?!

I never thought of using a blog in the classroom until now.  A blog could be a useful communication tool.  Events for the week can be posted for parents to see so they know what their child will be doing in class.  I could also use a blog to get input from the parents on ideas if I need them.  Posting assignments and test dates could be helpful for parents, too, so that they could make sure that their child had assignments ready and were ready when test dates came around.  I could post events, not only in the classroom, but in the school to make sure the parents know about them.

The sharing of ideas is also a great use for blogs.  I could post about activities that my class did that worked out great for other teachers to try.  I could share my thoughts on teaching methods how they worked for me, or didn't, so other teachers can possibly learn from my experiences.

Blogs are basically a great tool for getting information out there to be seen!

Thing Two! What I Think So Far

I actually enjoyed getting to create my blog!  I've never done one of these before, so this has been a new experience for me!  I chose the name of my blog for obvious reasons.  It is just my last name and 23 Things.  I didn't get too creative there, but that's okay!  I also chose to use my real name to post under.  I have no reason to hide my identity, so everyone can know who I am!  I didn't get very creative in these areas, but I am going to try and make up for it in others!

I didn't have a hard time making this blog at all!  My strategy is usually to press buttons until I get it to do what I want it to do, but this website is self explanatory for the most part.  I had a lot of fun picking out fonts and colors for my background!  I love getting to put things together like this, so this didn't feel much like school work, but more like something I was doing for fun!

The avatar frustrated me a little bit because I couldn't get it to look exactly how I wanted, but it's okay!  It reflects my personality as much as it possibly can.  I wish I had more clothing options, but I found something that was close to something I would wear.  I tried to make my avatar look as close to how I actually look as I could.  I want this whole blog to show who I am as much as possible, so I am making everything true to who I am.  Regardless, I had fun making myself into an avatar!

Thing One! Learning Habits

The 7 1/2 Habits of Lifelong Learning were very interesting to me! I think the easiest of these for me would be accepting responsibility for my own learning.  I believe that this is something that everyone needs to do.  Sitting around and waiting for someone else to come along and learn things for you is not an option.  When I do poorly on a test, I don't put the blame on anyone else but myself.  I obviously didn't do all that I could to learn that material.  The responsibility is mine, not anyone else's.

The hardest of the habits for me would have to be having confidence in myself.  I am very guilty of second guessing myself.  It doesn't matter how much I study, I always feel like I don't know enough, but I always end up knowing more than I think I do.  I need to learn to trust myself when it comes to what I know, instead of freaking out and thinking that I'm doing it wrong.

By playing with Web 2.0, I want to learn about the tools that I are available to me to use in the classroom.  I have never written a blog before, so this is a whole new experience for me!  It wasn't that hard, I just had to play around with things until I figured out how to do what I was trying to do. I think that this project will be very beneficial, as well as fun!  I am looking forward to doing more and learning more as I go along!