Thing #18

Twitter is my favorite way of communicating with my friends, catching up on the news, finding out who won the game, and sometimes reading a spoil alert about a new episode of my favorite TV show (unfortunately). There are all different types of Anonymous accounts that are there to make people laugh, and celebrities have twitters also.
 I like Twitter better than Facebook because its just for people's thoughts. No one is inviting me to play a stupid computer game or blowing up my time line with spam and invitations to play "Farmville" or whatever game they are inviting me to. I just like to see whats going on in those whose lives I care about but do not see often, or maybe pictures of a vacation, etc.
 Instructors need to know the importance of social networking because it is apart of the adolescents everyday lives now. I never go anywhere without my phone and I have been that way since my first flip phone. The future generations are going to become more tech savvy and soon a new social networking site will appear ten times better than the most popular ones of today.
I can only see the use of Twitter in the classroom if someone needed to do a biography about a celebrity or do a newsletter for the here and now subjects of our world. Facebook would be the better classroom option because people can create private groups. This would be good for group work, online discussions, etc.

Thing #17

Delicious is one of the most helpful resources that I have discovered in EDUC 3040. I definitely plan on using this as a classroom tool. The potential that Delicious has in the classroom goes above and beyond what my expectations were. You can see tags and bookmarks and comments all at once. You can attach the link to your page and have access to it whenever you need it.
Teachers can take advantage of social bookmarking sites by sharing ideas with other instructors, finding new practices or new ways of teaching a standard, and allow students to research and discover educational items on their own in some cases. The fact that I can type any English related word and Delicious comes up with hundreds of links is astonishing. And I can save them all to my page!

Thing #16

I chose iGoogle because it syncs with my Gmail account. It has everything that I usually check when I get on the Internet in one spot. You can also change the background photo and page theme. Bookmarks and widgets help navigate the web to other sites that I normally search for. I will not make it my personal homepage because the APSU one stop log in page is my current home page. APSU one stop and D2L is where I spend most of my Internet hours anyways.

Online calendars, like Google calendar, are helpful in organizing dates and meetings. You can color code your calendars, have more than one for different schedules, and if you have a Gmail account it can sync to your iPhone so you have the calendar with you always.

The to-do lists were an OK tool. I preferred Remember the Milk the most because of the layout and many tabs. The site is organized in my opinion and easy to follow. Unfortunately, I wont need to use it hardly because I have a To-do list application on my iPhone that I can quickly type up with no Internet access needed. Sometimes for me to really make sure I get something done, I have to write it on my hand so I will constantly see it and be reminded. That's only for extreme cases!

Google Calendars is the most useful tool I have come across, and I encourage others to get a Gmail account and play around with Google calendar.

Thing #15

Wikis would be useful for a group project where all persons involved will have access to the page. If I wanted to split my students into groups to create a page for a certain novel, wikis are the best way to do that. I did not have anything to write about when I added a page, so I was not as creative as I could have been. I just think it is interesting how everything is together and all persons involved have access to edit and save the page.

Thing #14

Making flow charts and mind maps is a fun and easy way to lay out your ideas so that they are easier to understand and follow. If you are like me, I have a million ideas running through my brain at once and its difficult to begin a paper or project without brainstorming first. Both sites that I used to create my charts make exporting files simple also.

I chose Gliffy to make my flowchart. It made the template for me, and all I needed to do was change the words and legend. Flowcharts help find a solution to a problem or question. I made a flow chart that would be relevant to my 12th grade English class for the standard I chose.

For the mind map, I chose the website bubbl.us. I made a brainstorming sheet for Chaucer which is an author that 12th graders cover. Mind maps are more for organizing a paper or making an outline of notes. Bubbl.us makes terms and directions easy to understand so making this mind map was quick.

Thing #13

The free Zoho online workshop is almost an exact replica of Microsoft Word. Zoho takes a few seconds to process letters when typed, but that depends on Internet access. Zoho is an easier to use and free tool for students who cannot afford Microsoft Word or need documents that can go wherever Internet access is available. If a student forgot their jump drive at school and have a paper due the next day, he or she can type it on Zoho and print it out for class time so it won't be late.

After working with Google Docs, I prefer Google over Zoho because students can use google docs with their emails to efficiently share and work on documents together. Zoho can be connected through each individuals email account, but, with Google, every student needs a gmail that downloads google docs correctly with misconstruing any of the documents. You may also use Google Docs to draw pictures like the one I made below.