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