Thing #18 - Twitter

https://twitter.com/JstinLorie

This activity took me a while because I have never used Twitter before. I do have a facebook and hadn't seen the need to get a Twitter. It forces you to choose a bunch of friends or things to follow just to sign up. I don't know anyone's Twitter account information so I ended up "following" a bunch of Educational websites. I primarily chose to follow Early Childhood Educational sites.
It is important for educators to understand social networking because its quickly becoming one of the leading forms of communication. It seems that people love the ability to just post a quick little statement about what is going on in their day, or what is on their  mind and post it into the cyber world for all their friends to read.
Hash-tags # confused me greatly at first. It seems to be a type of branding almost. Its a way to provide essential information that is supposed to improve your social media intelligence. Hash-tag searching pulls up relevant information to whatever word you had typed in. It works pretty well in my opinion.

I know that teachers are already using it in the classroom by having their students "follow" them in their class. Teachers use it to update information about their class, assignments, tests, and even schedule meeting times. 

Thing #17 - Delcious

Delicious is a neat site that lets you see other bookmarks and tags that your fellow friends and peers have made. You can see the comments they added about this bookmark and tags they used to categorize this reference. Delicious has a lot to offer for education teachers.

You can bookmark a website, organize them by tags, and be social in the processes.

Clicking the tag button quickly saves the website as a delicious bookmark. A teacher could use it to remember what sites have great information about a particular subject. Other people can see your tags and then use those great resources as well.

It's a way for teachers or anyone to share sites that they really enjoyed. It would be an easy way to access bookmarks from anywhere. I think Delicious could be a very useful tool for teachers as they plan their teaching agendas.

THING #16

              I chose to create my customized start page from uStart.org. I like this one because of its user friendly quick start link. It took me through a little tutorial that showed me how I could best use this to organize my life. All on one page I can find everything I need like my google drive, calender, news, and even social media sites I enjoy. I also like that they let you customize the "skin" or background colors of your page. I don't think I will make it my permanent home page at this time because I like some of the other webstites I have already discovered during this course better.

               An online calendar is wonderful and extremely useful to me! An online calendar allows me to access my information from any computer, or mobile device where ever I am at. I like online calenders because I never have to worry about forgetting to bring my paper calender around with me.

             I definitely discovered a tool that I will use at school and at home! I really like Zamzar which is a free online file converter. This is a wonderful tool and I would recommenced it to anyone who knows how to turn on a computer. I think that this tool is beneficial for everyone because at some time almost everyone will have to write a document and it is extremely frustrating when you send that document or try to print that document from a computer that can't open it because it is in a different format. Zamzar is a wonderful tool that can convert it from one format to another then emails it to you!

THING #15 - wiki

                     Well I just successfully completed my first editing experience on a wiki page! I went into 23 Things sandbox wiki and started messing around with it until I figured out how to "edit" a page. I chose not to edit anyone's previous work because I don't think that's very nice. I figure who ever posted in the past had taken time and consideration into their editing on the wiki page and I don't think its very nice to change that. So instead of editing someone's older material, I added my own new information to the 23 things sandbox APSU wiki page. So far my favorite feature of 23 things that I plan on using in my classroom would be from "thing #12" because I plan on using the Google calender and the Google alert features.

(this is a screen shot of the page)

                 I have used Wiki in the past and am familiar with the concept but strictly as an observer. I had never edited a website before so this was a brand new experience. I realized that I had to create an account in order to edit it, they do not allow just anyone to edit on it. After creating an account I searched for the APSU 23 things website and from there was allowed to edit the page and add my own information.

                I find it interesting that wiki essentially lets anyone write anything they want on any given topic. I think that this could be dangerous if there is no one watching over the information to check the validity of what is written. However, I also think that it is up to the reader to be a cautious consumer of the information they are ingesting.

                I might use a wiki with my class. I could give them an assignment to find out all the information they could about BETA fish (ex. where they are from, how they breathe, male/female characteristics) I would tell them to edit and change the wiki page as they gathered information on the BETA fish. I would be the administrator of the page to ensure the information was factual and at the end of the assignment we could purchase a class pet BETA fish.

THING #14 - Flow Charts and Mind Maps

                 After playing around with mind maps and flow charts I think that flow charts are easier for young children to understand. Flow charts use simple boxes and lines to connect ideas, as opposed to a mind map where there are lots of boxes and connecting lines. I think that young children would benefit from learning how to use flow charts and as they mature (and begin writing more complex essays) they should move into mind maps. 

Flow charts would also be fun to use when teaching children how to write "beginning, middle, and ends" of stories. We could have them move the boxes into the correct sequence of events.

            

                  I chose to set up a flow chart account at gliffy because I first tried setting one up at flowchart.com but they still have not sent me an invitation to join their site. SO, I moved on and tried out Gliffy. Gliffy was very simple to use, they have short tutorial that shows you how to use the site then you simply click start drawing. I used this to create a real project that I have coming up, I made a flow chart of my intended research projects for my MAT program. this is a simple to understand flowchart of my intended program of study. I could use this tool in my future class room when I want to create a simple diagram of what my expectations of the day are for the class. 

                                                                  FLOW CHART

                  I set up a mind map account  at Bubbl.us and figured out how to use it. It is actually quite fun to use once you get the hang of it. It helps in organizing your ideas. If you have a lot of different thoughts but are not sure how they connect, this is a great way to get a visual with lines and bubbles connecting them. So you would start with your topic and then put off shoots that support that topic. This would be a great tool in teaching when you teach children how to write essays with supporting sentences. You show them how you write down your topic or idea and use the other bubbles to support it. 

                                                             MIND MAP

Thing #13 -Google Drive

              I have to let you all know, I just recently discovered Google Drive and have LOVED using it for classes and work. My boss is the one who first introduced Google Drive to me because we have to keep track of so many papers and forms regarding our work. It had become a hassle to let each other know what documents had been edited and updated and which ones had not. Now regardless of where we are or when we update a form (even if the other person doesn't know about it) as long as its updated in Google Drive it automatically changes them!.. (SEE attached Google Drive document)

This is the rest of THING #12 blog inside my google drive document : Document link :

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QRWCVCGqNPfkmQ8N7Wh6lGt4gdGPMDAyOrU5Jneyxfk/pub

This is the embedded code
Starting here : 

Here is a picture I created on Google Drive: drawings
https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/19CxRtmVHDY335jS2RWcWj-19TN4pEmtwnkv03U9b8_s/pub?w=960&h=720

Thing #12 - Google!

            I have always loved and used Google. Google has been set as my home screen ever since I have had a computer, and I'm pretty sure it was set as my families home computer screen before I owned my own as well. I have chosen to set up a calendar and alert system on Google. I love that Google calender gives you access to your calendar no matter where you are. You are able to sync it with your phone, on your computer, or tablet. If you want you can set it up to send you reminders about different events you have scheduled by text messaging to your phone number! My favorite feature of Google calendar is the "share your schedule" feature. I think that this is the most handy dandy feature it has because you can chose to "share" your calender with your boss, family, friends, and anyone else who may need to get a hold of you. This feature will be extremely beneficial as a teacher because you could create a "work" calender to share with your students parents to set up conferences with them and let them know what will be going on in the class for that week. You could also use this feature to send out to your co-workers if you were trying to set up a meeting time or plan an event.



            Google Alerts is new to me. I have never used Google alerts before but I like this feature. I like the simple interface and I was able to learn how to use it very quickly. I typed in Elementary Education and it immediately gave me a list of the most current sites that were on Elementary Education. I think this feature will be beneficial as a teacher because it will keep me up to date on the newest news going on in Elementary Education. I could also use this as a teacher by asking my students topics they were interested in and then every day read them an interesting new article on what ever topic we had chosen as a class.