Thing #16

I really enjoy most Google Apps. I created the iGoogle home page for myself. I immediately was showing it to my husband and telling him he should make one. He has a similar function on his MacBook where he can put a lot of widgets or apps on his dashboard, so when he views it he can see a calendar, the weather, news, etc.


I also used the MSN Calendar. I liked that it already had US Holidays marked on it. I think it is an important tool because I am becoming a very busy person! Between school and working two part time (although thankfully flexible) jobs, I need to stay on track of where I belong and when.

I found Zamzar to be a great tool, it converts almost any file into another format. Especially since I work on PCs and my husband works on a Mac. We are often having problems when I want to send him a file, especially if it is a video clip. When he is deployed and gone for a long time I like to send pictures of everything going on while he is gone. Now that I have a new cell phone that takes pretty good videos, I like to send him video clips, like of our puppies playing together, the storm we had blow through last weekend, etc.

Thing #15

I found the Wiki experience to be great. It was as exciting as when I first learned about blogging. I have often referred to a "classroom blogspot" in my LiveText project. I use it in reference to it being a place for students to post homework, comment on each others work, etc. I believe now that this whole time I should have had a classroom wiki. The students should have been uploading the images they created, the poems the wrote and their other assignments into a class wiki. I like that we had a wiki already set up for 23 Things that we were able to jump into and just start working with, editing, and exploring.

I am taking the challenge and using Wikispaces to create the Wiki I would have had my students submit their work to. Kate Newshams Reading Class Wiki

Thing #14

Here is a Mind Map I started with Bubble.us. I found this site to be amazing and really wished that I had discovered it much sooner. I believe that bubble charts or concept webbing is a great visual way to brainstorm. This can be used when trying to take a lot of pieces of information, like standards being taught, and seeing how they might connect and relate to each other, what can be taught together, etc.
I liked Gliffy too. I found Gliffy to be another source that I wish I had discovered sooner. The ability to create a flowchart is till there, I do not believe it to be as easy to accomplish as with Bubble.us though. What Gliffy does offer is the ability to also create a floor plan, as we created out classroom drawings. You do not have the option to give as much detail, such as texture or fill effect, but it is a very quick, easy to use, way of creating a layout or floorplan.

Thing #13

Using Zoho Docs was very simple.


This is my gradebook for LiveText, I imported it into Zoho Spreadsheets and then used the published function. I did note that you can actually still work within the spreadsheet. Publishing the work was as easy to figure out as publishing this blog! I think that being able to access these documents via the internet is very beneficial. We will now be able to do without any type of portable memory device if need be. These documents could be sent to colleagues for review, editing and input. I was interviewing for a job at one point where I would have been a personal assistant for a contractor... I would have been able to work from home, he kept all of his work on Google Docs and I could view everything that he had and work within the document and/or retrieve any information that he may need over the phone if he was on a job site.

Thing #12

I started with the Google Calendar. I found the calendar very easy to use. My first thought was that I need to figure out a way to get the alerts to my husband, he never can remember what I am doing. There are times when I get done at an interview, doctors appointment, etc, I will find a dozen missed calls and voicemails wondering where I am. After that initial thought I began thinking how important this would be for myself as a student and once I start teaching. There will be many deadlines, steps to a project or meetings in the coming years. It will be important to keep track of them. If I made a public calendar as a teacher it could have all of the assignments, projects, tests or reading for each class and be accessible to he students and/or parents.



I found iGoogle to be very exciting too. The first thing that caught my attention was the weather 5-day forecast. I am obsessed with always knowing what the weather is. At first glance it reminded me of the way the Dashboard can be set up on a Mac. I have never worked with it very much but my husband has is account set-up, when he clicks on his dashboard the weather shows, calendar, sticky-notes, etc. I think the gadgets were the most fun. I added ones that were silly, simply because I like them, like the turtles and penguins, I love turtles and penguins. Then I added the important gadgets such as FOX News and the weather radar. Even the To Do List gadget, I am the queen of lists, especially to do lists, then there are the shopping lists and the items to bring lists. It is a sickness, I have lists everywhere, I blame it on my mother. I then spend a large portion of time moving, minimizing and deleting the assortment of gadgets all over my iGoogle page. I believe that this is a great resource for us as educators but for our students as well. We are moving into times where we do not need to know all sorts of information, we need to know how to search for information. Making an iGoogle page like I have creates every possible type of search, weather, news, movie times, recipes, sports, etc.

Thing #11

I started with Bloglines to search for special education related blogs. I began my search with "special education" I was hoping to find something relevant to follow. I did not find their "search"to be very useful. Maybe because I had a broad topic, but I was looking for bloggers that were only special education related, not just scanning the blog titles for that phrase, I would come across items that were just news feeds of who the new special education head of the department was for such-and-such city.

When I was reading the Cool Cat Teacher Blog I found a bit more success, and not through any search engine. When it suggested that we look at the "blogroll," I did. From there I started looking at other blogs on that roll and adding the ones I liked to my RSS feed. I was traveling from blog to blog when I came across a post that was titled Stop Reading-Skim Dive Skim. I clicked on the blog, began reading, then stopped, and started cracking up as I realized I was literally doing, letter for letter, what the blog was discussing. So often we read anymore by skimming, stopping and reading or "diving" more in depth at key points and then skimming on.

With Technorati I had a little more success in my search for a significant special education blog. At first, searching for "special education" turned up nothing, but without the quotes I had some results to search through. The one that caught my attention was Teaching All Students I found this to be a mix of good usable information and a good source of personal tales. The writer is a special education teacher and often blogs about using technology with his students.

Thing #10

I found the RSS to be an incredible piece of technology. I am a little crazy about things. I check the weather every morning. Whenever I have down time I am on my phone reading the Top Stories and the "Strange News" from the Associated Press. Now if there was a way to link the RSS feed with my Facebook and my banking accounts I would be set. I must spent 20-30 minutes every morning.

I think that this would be a great resource in a social studies or current events type of class. If the class had a Google Reader and subscribed to certain reliable and credible news sources it would be a great way to start each class. I think that an English or Language Arts teacher might use an RSS feed if they assign blogging to their students, they may use it as a journal assignment, having the RSS feed will help check each students entries. In the same manner, if a teacher uses a blog like I suggested in a previous post they may set their RSS feed to monitor each blog related to each class period to just monitor if the students or parents are commenting.

I created the public page. I am currently sharing two funny stories from my "Strange News" AP feeds. My Public Page