My experience with APSU 23 Things has been awesome, bumpy, frustrating, and educational all at the same time. I really enjoyed learning about blogging, Animoto, the web-based applications, flow charts/mind maps, the image generator, and RSS feeds. Of all the 23 Things, I feel these will be the ones that I will use the most on a regular basis. Using technology to my advantage is no longer the hardest Lifelong Learning Habit for me, it is a constantly improving and easier habit I am forming. After this experience I feel more knowledgeable and prepared for the technology I will face in the classrooms. When I first learned of completing the 23 Things, I thought it would just be "busy work"and it was, but I learned an immense amount about the different technologies that I did not know before and I am very thankful for this style of a learning experience. The biggest issue for me was Thing #15, I don't know what the glitch is, but there is one when trying to edit the page, this should either be corrected or better explained in the directions for Thing #15 for many students had the same issues when trying to post. Completing APSU 23 Things has taught me that whether I like it or not technology is going to become my new best friend and has more benefits that pitfalls. I have to stay on my toes and keep up with the times if I am going to be the best, most prepared educator I can be! And, thanks to my RSS Feeds and the different educational forums I have joined along the way on this experience, I think that I have the tools to stay informed with the newest and latest technology for education and the classrooms!
GO ME!
Avatar
Monday, November 29, 2010
Thing #22
http://feeds.feedburner.com/thetechteachers
I chose to listen to The Tech Teachers podcasts where they discuss new technologies and education...which fits perfectly with Education 3040! I found the Learn Out Loud directory to be the easiest to use, when I attempted to use the Educational Podcast Directory some of them were old or didn't load properly, or simply didn't interest me. I think there is a need for more exciting, vibrant teaching podcasts and when I have my own classroom I would like to incorporate podcasts into some of the bigger, kid friendly, and exciting projects the class will do as a documentary of the do's and don'ts of the projects. I am going to follow the Tech Teachers' podcasts because no matter where you teach technology is busting down the doors and forcing its way into the classroom benefiting the education of our children!
I chose to listen to The Tech Teachers podcasts where they discuss new technologies and education...which fits perfectly with Education 3040! I found the Learn Out Loud directory to be the easiest to use, when I attempted to use the Educational Podcast Directory some of them were old or didn't load properly, or simply didn't interest me. I think there is a need for more exciting, vibrant teaching podcasts and when I have my own classroom I would like to incorporate podcasts into some of the bigger, kid friendly, and exciting projects the class will do as a documentary of the do's and don'ts of the projects. I am going to follow the Tech Teachers' podcasts because no matter where you teach technology is busting down the doors and forcing its way into the classroom benefiting the education of our children!
Thing #21
Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.
Animoto is super easy and super cool! At first I thought I was going to have to go Facebook and save some of the pictures to the desktop and upload them from there...but oh no....Animoto had a better idea and linked directly to my Facebook account and retrieved the pictures for me! Can I say wow! Wow. This site is an awesome tool for the classroom...you could take pictures of the students doing different projects or just during class time, create a quick easy video on Animoto, and share it with parents via email or better yet a blog you created for the purposes of staying connected to the parents of the students in your class. As a mom, I love seeing pictures of my babies in different environments where I am not present and with my elementary students I would like to give my parents the same experience. Animoto makes this really quick and easy to do! OH, if you don't have time to wait for the video to finish, go ahead and do what you need to do because Animoto will send you an email when they are finish...why can't the cable guy do this instead of making you wait for him for 4 hours?
Thing #20
YouTube is a very simple site to navigate and I had no problems, but of course I have visited the site on other occasions although never to look at videos that pertain to the education world. The site is simply search and go, and it even shows related videos to your search information. An excellent way to broaden some one's horizon with new information. I chose this video because it is our wonderful President Obama speaking on America's education and there isn't any more important information I would rather spread. YouTube could be used for teachers to post lesson videos for children who need a little extra help or reminders to assist them with doing their homework. It would be a lot more work for the teacher, but for the student who doesn't have educational support in their home, the videos would be priceless!
Thing #19
Visit TeacherPop
I am one of the newest member of the TeacherPop online community! I used to be a member of my high school's Ning page, but it was discontinued. :( But, I recently created an online community on Facebook as a forum for the planning of our high school class reunion next year....and where do you think I got the idea from.....of course Thing # 19! lol
I was most interested in the Bake Space community being that my husband is deployed and I will using my free time to become a better baker and cooking with the kids! Classroom 2.0 is neat too, and its cool that the site has a beginner group for those of us who are new to using the different technologies in education.
I am definitely interested in creating my own group/online community to create an environment that I am more comfortable in sharing my ups and downs of teaching with others who relate to me...not everyone is open when it comes to discussing the downs of being a first year educator and I would like a community with no judgements or sugar coated truths!
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Thing # 18
Asante Pugh
Teachers need to know how social networking works so that they socialize and communicate with their peers at the click of a button. Being able to manuever thorough the social networking world educates teachers on the do's and don't's of these types of sites and eliminate the unknown causing big mistakes. I already had a Facebook account that I use to stay in contact with friends and families that live far away, but I did learn that on Myspace it is way easier to keep up with what is going on in entertainment media all one page! When exploring the sites, Facebook was alot easier to set up and get started, opposed to myspace being a little difficult for me to setup and the page was way too busy for me...I would never be able to digest all the information that is provided on the homepage in one sitting nor would I want to. Facebook had the most useful features for communicating with others, but Myspace had more useful features for information on entertainment, videos, new topics, etc. Personally, I feel that these are personal socializing sites and prefer to keep them out of the classroom for any grades!
Teachers need to know how social networking works so that they socialize and communicate with their peers at the click of a button. Being able to manuever thorough the social networking world educates teachers on the do's and don't's of these types of sites and eliminate the unknown causing big mistakes. I already had a Facebook account that I use to stay in contact with friends and families that live far away, but I did learn that on Myspace it is way easier to keep up with what is going on in entertainment media all one page! When exploring the sites, Facebook was alot easier to set up and get started, opposed to myspace being a little difficult for me to setup and the page was way too busy for me...I would never be able to digest all the information that is provided on the homepage in one sitting nor would I want to. Facebook had the most useful features for communicating with others, but Myspace had more useful features for information on entertainment, videos, new topics, etc. Personally, I feel that these are personal socializing sites and prefer to keep them out of the classroom for any grades!
Thing # 17
Del.icio.us is a creative website and makes bookmarking a better experience and the site itself is very easy to use and navigate. Having to only remember one website is a lot better than having to remember 16, and this benefits me because I complete a lot of my work at school in the lab, which isn't my personal computer so I don't bookmark sites to those computers. I would write the web addresses down so that I could use them later, just to misplace them or throw them out by mistake, but luckily for me I don't have to do this anymore and can bookmark them using the Del.icio.us website, and have access to the websites instantly on any computer!
What's really cool is that when you are using or looking at other websites that have been bookmarked in your social network, you can see the comments and tags they used for the site, which saves you time because it helps you weed through the best sites from the not so useful websites.
This tool has great potential for use in the classrooms as well as a social bookmarking tool. When age appropriate, accounts can be set up and used for group projects allowing each student to see the research their peers have found, which eliminates each group member from using the same sources providing a broader research database for the project. It can also be used by teachers and their peers as a tool to share new and interesting student interactive websites that can be used in the classroom to help the students develop an understanding of the concepts being taught.
What's really cool is that when you are using or looking at other websites that have been bookmarked in your social network, you can see the comments and tags they used for the site, which saves you time because it helps you weed through the best sites from the not so useful websites.
This tool has great potential for use in the classrooms as well as a social bookmarking tool. When age appropriate, accounts can be set up and used for group projects allowing each student to see the research their peers have found, which eliminates each group member from using the same sources providing a broader research database for the project. It can also be used by teachers and their peers as a tool to share new and interesting student interactive websites that can be used in the classroom to help the students develop an understanding of the concepts being taught.
Thing #16
I chose iGoogle as my start page. Google is almost just too simple. I chose this start page right off the bat because it could be created it under 30 seconds...and who doesn't like quick, easy, efficient options to better organize their lives. I am definitely going to make this my homepage for one important reason: I currently have it set to AOL, but iGoogle lists the same items as AOL but it is all customized to my life plus more like my email, Clarksville's weather, local date and time, you tube, chat, recipes, and movies!
What more could a busy woman ask for?
The Hotmail Calendar I created will be useful to me in many ways. While I am in school I can use it to keep up with my assignment due dates, finals dates, class meeting times, project due dates, etc. It also allows me to make to do lists eliminating the need for a separate "ta da list"! Awesome. It's a great tool, and unlike my date book....I can't leave it at home or in the kids' diaper bag at their daycare!
I set up a Remember the Milk account and it was extremely too much work and difficult for me to navigate raising my frustration level to the point where I just quit and moved on to the next tool. And that is all I have to say about that!
I would recommend Sticky Notes and Zamzar to anyone any day of the week. Sticky notes without the clutter...Awesome! Not to mention the many options the tool has: sticky's on your desktop, send them over local networks and internet, print them, you can even customized the format and edit them...have your cake and eat it too! There has been countless times that I have saved a picture in the wrong format and became so over heated, but now the Zamzar tool lets you change the format of many files and it emails the new file to you, eliminating the need to retake the picture...who wouldn't want to know about this tool! Kawana save your comments!
What more could a busy woman ask for?
The Hotmail Calendar I created will be useful to me in many ways. While I am in school I can use it to keep up with my assignment due dates, finals dates, class meeting times, project due dates, etc. It also allows me to make to do lists eliminating the need for a separate "ta da list"! Awesome. It's a great tool, and unlike my date book....I can't leave it at home or in the kids' diaper bag at their daycare!
I set up a Remember the Milk account and it was extremely too much work and difficult for me to navigate raising my frustration level to the point where I just quit and moved on to the next tool. And that is all I have to say about that!
I would recommend Sticky Notes and Zamzar to anyone any day of the week. Sticky notes without the clutter...Awesome! Not to mention the many options the tool has: sticky's on your desktop, send them over local networks and internet, print them, you can even customized the format and edit them...have your cake and eat it too! There has been countless times that I have saved a picture in the wrong format and became so over heated, but now the Zamzar tool lets you change the format of many files and it emails the new file to you, eliminating the need to retake the picture...who wouldn't want to know about this tool! Kawana save your comments!
Thing #15
Editing APSU 23 Sandbox wiki was a real pain, which I wasn't expecting according to the tutorial, but I guess you win some and you loose some! Library wiki's are awesome, but you have to make sure your students understand the concept of wiki, so they don't believe any little thing their impressionable minds may read on a wiki. Interesting enough, I feel that there should be a "higher power" evaluating wiki sites to try to ensure the reliability of the information posted to them.
Using Wiki's can be great, but somewhat unreliable in the sense that anyone can post and make changes. Wiki's can be great starting points for research being that usually when someone makes a change they will often leave references for where they got their information and these can be used to jump start creditable research of your own! I just think it is important for the person who is doing the research or using Wiki to validate of their own work to eliminate issues of inconsistency!
Using Wiki's can be great, but somewhat unreliable in the sense that anyone can post and make changes. Wiki's can be great starting points for research being that usually when someone makes a change they will often leave references for where they got their information and these can be used to jump start creditable research of your own! I just think it is important for the person who is doing the research or using Wiki to validate of their own work to eliminate issues of inconsistency!
Friday, November 19, 2010
Thing # 14
I chose to explore Gliffy (flow chart) and Bubble us (mind map) to explore for this "Thing". Both tools are awesome, but Bubble Us was more entertaining.
Gliffy has great templates that you can use to modify your task specifically. It has everything from website/ software designs, Venn Diagrams, Floor Plans, Flow Charts, Org Charts, Business Process, to Network Diagrams, etc. It allows to create your own document from a designed template or start with a blank document and you can choose your shapes and lines from the template options. Figuring out where all the lines are and the different types was a little frustrating, but once I located where everything was on the interface the program was easier to navigate. If we were allowed to use templates to create our Classroom Drawings, this site would have been AWESOME!...maybe next time kiddos:(
Bubble Us was awesome! I used it to help me brainstorm some ideas for my scavenger hunt and webquest and it was supper easy to you use. You create your account and just click on the page to bring up your first bubble and from then on you click enter to create a child bubble or tab to create a sibling bubble. All the other controls are self explanatory and if you can't figure it out; if you put your pointer over the control a detailed description is at the bottom of the page...so don't freak out Ashley...you are OK! Oh, one more thing, when you get rid of a bubble there is an explosion, which I thought was really neat and made me laugh because I wasn't expecting it.
Overall, both tools will be extremely useful to my career as an educator and personal life. I can see myself using Bubble Us to create original, cool worksheets for my class to do their brainstorming on, or if it is age appropriate letting them set up their own accounts, especially for Bubble Us, they could use it for a variety of classes now and in their future education. Gliffy's Floor Plans can help me design my dream/retirement home when I am ready to build...I can be my own architect! Cool!
Gliffy has great templates that you can use to modify your task specifically. It has everything from website/ software designs, Venn Diagrams, Floor Plans, Flow Charts, Org Charts, Business Process, to Network Diagrams, etc. It allows to create your own document from a designed template or start with a blank document and you can choose your shapes and lines from the template options. Figuring out where all the lines are and the different types was a little frustrating, but once I located where everything was on the interface the program was easier to navigate. If we were allowed to use templates to create our Classroom Drawings, this site would have been AWESOME!...maybe next time kiddos:(
Bubble Us was awesome! I used it to help me brainstorm some ideas for my scavenger hunt and webquest and it was supper easy to you use. You create your account and just click on the page to bring up your first bubble and from then on you click enter to create a child bubble or tab to create a sibling bubble. All the other controls are self explanatory and if you can't figure it out; if you put your pointer over the control a detailed description is at the bottom of the page...so don't freak out Ashley...you are OK! Oh, one more thing, when you get rid of a bubble there is an explosion, which I thought was really neat and made me laugh because I wasn't expecting it.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Thing # 13
This site is awesome. The first thing that came into my thoughts was....Uh-huh, Microsoft on wheels. It can be very frustrating to have a document that you created on your home computer and get to where you need it and it didn't save properly to your thumb drive...what do you do then...besides panic! It was amazingly simple to set up the account and if you can navigate Microsoft Word, you can navigate this application with no problems. They are eerily similar in design, but only on Zoho can you access your documents anywhere you have a computer and internet access. I will be using this application in the future. You can even do mail merge using this application...great for starting midterm reports during a break at school and finishing them at home, making this application pretty useful for an educator.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Thing #12
I explored Google Alerts and Google Translate. I set up a Google Alert for news feeds for Toddler Development in the hopes of learning of the newest findings of what these amazing little people are capable of and how to expand and build on their previous knowledge to help them advance in development in the most efficient ways possible. Google Translate is awesome too. I tried to find a translation for "What's up Chicka," but apparently all languages say it the same except the Spanish, who would say it as "Que pasa Chicka," which was interesting to me. These Google Tools can be used efficiently in the classroom, for instance, Google Translate could be used to spark interest in the kids learning a new language and they could search for translations of their favorite sayings of that time, or Google Alerts could be used to further educators professional developments by alerting them to the newest technology and developments available that could improve the educational world.
Care to know what this means and what language it is in: Qual è il tuo nome?
Care to know what this means and what language it is in: Qual è il tuo nome?
Thing #11
Finding good feeds with the Google Blog Search and Technorati were definitely the easiest tools to use with the simpliest methods. On Technorati, the search block is located at the top, center page and gives you the option to use key words to search for blogs or posts, which I thought was really cool! However, Syndic8.com was my least favorite and most confusing for me...it had too much and too many random things on the homepage and it made it hard for me to focus on one thing with all the lists. I subscribed to the Flat Classroom Project and The School Law Blog, because I felt they would have good ideas for the classroom and what is currently going on in different classrooms across the world. I did a search for blogging about being a first time mom and the one and only site that came up on Technorati was Mysticmargarita, but when I got to the site it was giving translations of a different language....not at all what I was expecting. Be careful of what you search for and you actually find! Not all are what they appear to be!
Thing #10
RSS is super cool and makes blogging life a lot simpler! It operates just like the homepage on Facebook. You log on and you can see what is new with your subscribed websites (just as with your friends on Facebook) and you can read through them based on their importance to you. It sure beats having to open up 50 tabs as I was doing in the past! RSS can easily be integrated in the classroom and my personal life. I could have my students to create blogs to post to homework assignments to and subscribe to them on my Google reader and I would only have to check for assignments in one place which saves me time as far as checking each student's site constantly looking for the assignments. I subscribed to a couple of educator blogs, so now I will be recieving their updates as they are made for new technology available and feeds available from the pioneer woman which assist me in my professional development. It would also be cool to connect with my future peers in my school to share new, exciting ideas as they happen throughout the school year. RSS is definitely worth the time and effort it took to set it up!
Thing #7
Flickr. FLIcker. FLICKER! Not my friend at all. The photos on the site are awesome and there are a wide variety and creative photos to look at, but I had a hard time navigating the site and attaching photos to my blog, which is why I uploaded my own to share on my blog. I don't think I would use Flickr for the age of students I will have the privilege of teaching, simply because I don't think they will be able to enjoy the site for what it was built for. I am very uncomfortable having my personal pictures on the site for everyone to see and as soon as this learning experience is complete I will be removing them. I generally don't use these types of sites, but they could be a convenient source to quickly show your students pictures of different things that are being studied. I have heard awesome things about Flickr, but is NOT FOR ME!
Monday, October 11, 2010
Thing #9
Happy Face Generator
Of all the generators, this was my favorite to use. It was easy and simple. It lets you change the colors, fonts, sizes, and smiley faces to make each creation your own. I would personally place this banner over the entrance to the teacher's lounge and the entrance to the school on teacher/parent conference nights to remind everyone of what is most important and why we do what we do. This generator would also be useful to have the children create different banners for different seasons and decorate the classrooms and bulletin boards so the children will feel a sense of pride and importance to their learning environments.
Thing #8
I enjoyed using Flickr mash ups much better! This program has electronized finding letters in magazines to create collages. This experience took me back to those childhood activities. It was easy and I especially liked changing the letters simply by clicking on them to one that I liked better. I would use these programs to assist my students in making collages and meaningful art projects.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Thing #6
MINT.com
www.mint.com
Mint.com is a site that basically replaces a financial advisor, the coupon mint, a budget advisor, online banking, and a tax advisor all in one place. It easy to set up an account: you create your login name and password, put in your online bank account user name and password, choose your bank, and the site does the rest. Oh, IT’S FREE! The site has the same level of securities as the online banking websites, it’s a money manager, gives timely alerts, helps with budgeting, shows your spending patterns, finds savings for you, and helps you reduce your debt. It also has a mobile application, graphs, gives credit card advice, and helps you get ready for taxes!
Hello Free and Goodbye expensive advisors and tax preparers!
Mint.com could be useful for older kids when they start managing their own starter banking accounts, but would be more appropriate for parents to use as a teaching tool at home instead of in the school or library setting.
This website is awesome in my book!
www.mint.com
Mint.com is a site that basically replaces a financial advisor, the coupon mint, a budget advisor, online banking, and a tax advisor all in one place. It easy to set up an account: you create your login name and password, put in your online bank account user name and password, choose your bank, and the site does the rest. Oh, IT’S FREE! The site has the same level of securities as the online banking websites, it’s a money manager, gives timely alerts, helps with budgeting, shows your spending patterns, finds savings for you, and helps you reduce your debt. It also has a mobile application, graphs, gives credit card advice, and helps you get ready for taxes!
Hello Free and Goodbye expensive advisors and tax preparers!
Mint.com could be useful for older kids when they start managing their own starter banking accounts, but would be more appropriate for parents to use as a teaching tool at home instead of in the school or library setting.
This website is awesome in my book!
Thing #5
My reaction to Web 2.0: A Guide for Educators and The Horizons Report was: WOW….Really? I was amazed at what technology has done for the education classroom and teaching careers. I look forward to creating my own personal learning environment with Web 2.0 through blogs, pod casts, social bookmarking sites, aggregators, and RSS. Being able to improve my professional career at my own pace will make it easier for me to be the best educator, mom, wife, and house cleaner… I can be and better balance the roles. Furthermore, I realized that by creating my works in Livetext to create my Professional Portfolio, I was already using Web 2.0’s Social Operating Systems. Go Me!
Web 2.0 is very promising for schools of the future. By integrating, in the upcoming years, interactive projectors, mobile broadbands (cell phones), collaboration webs, virtual field trips, data mash-ups, collective intelligence, and more schools will become more convenient places to learn. Using these different technologies will reduce paper use and in turn lessens pollution, improve tracking systems, and reduces paper trails. The children already use these things for recreation use and by integrating them into the classrooms; just maybe, fun will be reintegrated back into the classroom along the process.
Web 2.0 is very promising for schools of the future. By integrating, in the upcoming years, interactive projectors, mobile broadbands (cell phones), collaboration webs, virtual field trips, data mash-ups, collective intelligence, and more schools will become more convenient places to learn. Using these different technologies will reduce paper use and in turn lessens pollution, improve tracking systems, and reduces paper trails. The children already use these things for recreation use and by integrating them into the classrooms; just maybe, fun will be reintegrated back into the classroom along the process.
Thing #4
Commenting helps create a sense of community and interaction by allowing others, usually friends, family, co-workers, etc to share their opinion on the issue being discussed. A community is made of people you love and value; commenting reciprocates their love and value for the blogger.
Commenting is important because it shows the blog author they are being heard. By responding to comments on your blog, you show your appreciation of your followers and if the comment is substantive it may enlighten your views on your initial blog. Most people blog because they feel they have something important to say and they want to be heard and share their thoughts on the situation. Commenting proves to them that they really are being heard.
I selected the following blogs to read and comment on: Meagan Artz, Matthew Ciezki, Sarah LaBean, Michelle Carpenter, Brittany Menees, the LA Times Local Blog, and Mommalicious-Striving For Fabulous With Spit-up On My Shoulder. I chose each of these because I could relate to their blog, they had a cool avatar, or the topic being discussed was of great interest to me.
I commented on Meagan’s blog because she had an awesome idea of posting upcoming school events on her educator blog and I wasn’t familiar with this technique for parent/teacher communication. Matthew had the cutest avatar that really does look like him; even more so, he writes like he is having a live conversation with you and makes his information interesting, easy to follow, and funny. I could relate to Sarah’s fear of learning the unknown and wanted to give her the comfort of knowing she was not alone. I had to comment on Michelle…The woman is a black belt martial artist and will now be a teacher, which I feel will be an inspiration to all her students. Brittany had already made it to exploring the Flickr website and the picture of the dogs she found is to die for! I commented on the LA Time blog on a story of a woman trying to kill her baby because she didn’t want her husband to know she was pregnant, but the baby was found alive. I didn’t agree with a lot of the comments that were being made, so I tried to give the conversation a new direction. Finally, I commented on a recently created blog: Mommalicious-Striving for Fabulous With Spit-up On My Shoulder, because I felt the exact same way she feels now when I decided to come back to school to become an educator.
Commenting is important because it shows the blog author they are being heard. By responding to comments on your blog, you show your appreciation of your followers and if the comment is substantive it may enlighten your views on your initial blog. Most people blog because they feel they have something important to say and they want to be heard and share their thoughts on the situation. Commenting proves to them that they really are being heard.
I selected the following blogs to read and comment on: Meagan Artz, Matthew Ciezki, Sarah LaBean, Michelle Carpenter, Brittany Menees, the LA Times Local Blog, and Mommalicious-Striving For Fabulous With Spit-up On My Shoulder. I chose each of these because I could relate to their blog, they had a cool avatar, or the topic being discussed was of great interest to me.
I commented on Meagan’s blog because she had an awesome idea of posting upcoming school events on her educator blog and I wasn’t familiar with this technique for parent/teacher communication. Matthew had the cutest avatar that really does look like him; even more so, he writes like he is having a live conversation with you and makes his information interesting, easy to follow, and funny. I could relate to Sarah’s fear of learning the unknown and wanted to give her the comfort of knowing she was not alone. I had to comment on Michelle…The woman is a black belt martial artist and will now be a teacher, which I feel will be an inspiration to all her students. Brittany had already made it to exploring the Flickr website and the picture of the dogs she found is to die for! I commented on the LA Time blog on a story of a woman trying to kill her baby because she didn’t want her husband to know she was pregnant, but the baby was found alive. I didn’t agree with a lot of the comments that were being made, so I tried to give the conversation a new direction. Finally, I commented on a recently created blog: Mommalicious-Striving for Fabulous With Spit-up On My Shoulder, because I felt the exact same way she feels now when I decided to come back to school to become an educator.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Thing #3
Using a Blog can be beneficial to an educator in numerous ways. It can be a social outlet that allows an educator to reflect on his or her teaching experiences in a public journal that allows other education professionals to comment, share, or discover new information at the click of a button. An educator can teach his or her students how to blog and use it as a journal for classes, as a positive outlet to express the way they feel. They could be known as the "Internet Freedom Writers"! The most important benefit of a blog to an educator would be letting his or her students discuss activities done in class and what they thought about them. These postings would allow the teacher to see the good, the bad, and the ugly of how that activity was received and allow him or her to make adjustments as necessary to improve his or her teaching styles.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Thing #2
Deciding on my posting name and the name of my blog was easy; it represents who I want to become and when I striving to accomplish this goal. I want to be a Great Educator by the end of the year of 2012 and APSU 23 Things is the only the start of many more New Beginnings along my journey to accomplishing my goal.
It was hard, frustrating, and stressful creating my blog. I couldn't get my computer to accept the right cookies, I didn't read far enough to know where to create my avatar, I couldn't exactly remember where to go back to start posting, and my two year old was tearing up the house while my six month old was crying because he couldn't help her! Creating my blog was a crazy experience, but once I settled down and followed the step-by-step instructions in Livetext it became manageable and a positive experience that I will never forget.
My avatar was created to reflect my real personality and appearance. She is smiling, confident, wearing braids (which I almost always have) and awesome glasses. She is dressed somewhat current, but comfortable because she has two kids...just like myself! We are awesome!
It was hard, frustrating, and stressful creating my blog. I couldn't get my computer to accept the right cookies, I didn't read far enough to know where to create my avatar, I couldn't exactly remember where to go back to start posting, and my two year old was tearing up the house while my six month old was crying because he couldn't help her! Creating my blog was a crazy experience, but once I settled down and followed the step-by-step instructions in Livetext it became manageable and a positive experience that I will never forget.
My avatar was created to reflect my real personality and appearance. She is smiling, confident, wearing braids (which I almost always have) and awesome glasses. She is dressed somewhat current, but comfortable because she has two kids...just like myself! We are awesome!
Thing #1
The Lifelong Learning Habit that is the easiest for me is accepting responsibility for my own learning. Once I decided to attend college, I knew that at that time my learning opportunities were in my own hands. In college, there would be no more of anybody telling me to go to class, take notes, participate in class, study, read the material, and practice concepts. I understood from day one that these were now my responsibilities and I took them seriously mainly for two reasons: I am now paying for this part of my education and I want to be the best Educator I can become.
The Lifelong Learning Habit that is the hardest for me is using technology to my advantage. I am not a computer illiterate person, but I am completely computer savvy either. I use technology for the basics like social sites for communicating with family and friends, email, banking, research and writing papers, and etc. I have never blogged, used a smart board, etc and would rather use a simpler method, but I do understand to be an effective teacher, I have to evolve with technology, learn to use it effectively for its learning benefits, and give my students the learning opportunities it has to offer them.
By playing with Web 2.0 tools and setting up my blog, I would like to become more familiar with emerging technology and the correct ways to communicate my learning experiences and learning from others experiences. Setting up my blog was an eye opening experience; it showed me how inexperienced I was with some of the internet's technology and became frustrating at times, especially adding the avatar, but its something I can say I know how to do now and the first step in improving my knowledge of technology for the classroom.
The Lifelong Learning Habit that is the hardest for me is using technology to my advantage. I am not a computer illiterate person, but I am completely computer savvy either. I use technology for the basics like social sites for communicating with family and friends, email, banking, research and writing papers, and etc. I have never blogged, used a smart board, etc and would rather use a simpler method, but I do understand to be an effective teacher, I have to evolve with technology, learn to use it effectively for its learning benefits, and give my students the learning opportunities it has to offer them.
By playing with Web 2.0 tools and setting up my blog, I would like to become more familiar with emerging technology and the correct ways to communicate my learning experiences and learning from others experiences. Setting up my blog was an eye opening experience; it showed me how inexperienced I was with some of the internet's technology and became frustrating at times, especially adding the avatar, but its something I can say I know how to do now and the first step in improving my knowledge of technology for the classroom.
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