Final Thoughts

By doing the 23 Things program, I have learned SO much. It has been a wonderful experience becoming more knowledgeable of the technology that has been and will continue to be around me. I had never thought to explore all that Web 2.0 had to offer (I didn't even know what Web 2.0 was!). I believe that this program is extremely beneficial to me as a student, but more importantly as a future educator. I have learned about so many tools that will be beneficial to my future students and will help me as I build my classroom. This has been very informative and a lot of fun!

Thing Twenty-Three

Web 2.0-23 Things is pretty cool. Here is another person's blog about the 23 things and here is one made for Archivists (this one has more than 23 things, it looks pretty fun to check out!)

Creative Commons is a very interesting program and actually makes life a little bit easier! It allows you to share information with others and to use others' information-with rules. If you didn't pay for the work, if you choose to share the work, you can't charge others for the work. If you drew the work, you can share it with others, they just can't claim the work as their own, and so forth. Creative Commons is important to us, as educators, in that we are responsible for doing our job right, teaching students the right way to do things, and sharing information with them that they can use later on in their school careers.

Thing Twenty-Two

Livebinders.com
is a pretty neat site to have, especially for a teacher. It allows you to compile a collection of your documents, favorite websites, virtually anything and save it in essentially, a binder. This tool is very useful to have handy for the classroom. You could literally save ANYTHING in them. You could have one for student assignments, a sub folder, extra credit opportunities, etc. There is no limit to what you could do with Livebinders. I created 3 binders: one for Education (websites that are beneficial to me as a college student as well as a future teacher), Personal (includes websites that I frequently enjoy "shopping" on), and one for Blogs that I keep up with and enjoy reading.

Here is my Livebinder:(All of my binders are listed as 'Personal' so, you may not be able to see them.

Thing Twenty-One

Animoto. Oh yeah. I thought that this was really kinda silly at first. I thought, seriously? We have to make a video? But this was actually really fun. If you want to see mine you can look here.This tool can be used in the classroom for many things. It is a fun and different alternative to your typical powerpoint and can incorporate your pictures from your Facebook which is super cool. I enjoyed this and found it to be very useful and easy to navigate.

Thing Twenty

I LOVE YOUTUBE!!!!! It is the best-literally. You can find ANYTHING on YouTube. You need to learn how to sew? How to do a math problem? How to ride a bike?! There's a video for that. On YouTube. So, through this process of searching YouTube for an awesome video, I found some on Flash Mobs. Oh my goodness...I love flash mobs almost as much as I love White Cheddar Cheezits and that's saying a lot. So, with that being said. I found this awesome flash mob video. This video was shot in Paris and it is the biggest one EVER. To be in a Flash Mob is definitely on my Bucket List. It WILL happen.

So, if you haven't explored YouTube yet, do it. There is something out there that will spark your interest. There is also another website called TeacherTube that has videos that are educational and it literally has endless information as well. Go see for yourself!

Thing Nineteen

Who knew that more social networking sites existed other than Facebook and Twitter? I didn't! Even more surprising is that there is one for teachers! Created right here at Austin Peay! It is called Teacher Pop and you can check it out here. While exploring other social networking sites, I found a site that I have been a faithful user to: IMDB (Internet Movie Database)-I had no clue that it was technically a social network. Too cool for school!
As a member of this society, I definitely am an avid user and visitor of Facebook and Twitter. I "keep up with the Jones'" as far as that goes.
I think that I will use Teacher Pop in the near future as I begin my life as a new teacher, being as how Teacher Pop is a social network designed especially for teachers. It is a great community to have your voice heard and to hear the wisdom of other teachers as well. :-)


Visit TeacherPop

Thing Eighteen

Social Networking...is a HUGE part of American society today. There are applications on mobile phones in which you can keep the world up to date with your every breath. I am guilty of being addicted to Social Networking-I am constantly on Facebook. I check my Twitter every now and then. I feel as though Twitter is more of a "celebrity" thing-granted, I do follow celebrities but I also use Twitter to "follow" companies and stores to keep up with different sales. However, through this class we had to explore Twitter to find educational Twitter pages. I was a bit skeptical thinking, "Really?!", but there actually are some really neat Twitter accounts made for teachers BY teachers. All you have to do is Search: Education and you will find a number of accounts that are dedicated to education. This is a new, modern tool that will be increasingly used, a tool that will be old news sooner than we think. So, while it's here and available-check it out!

Thing Seventeen

Del.icio.us actually is pretty flippin' Delicious! This website gives the opportunity to bookmark interesting information that could be very useful to future classrooms. This website allows you to bookmark information, but it is all stored in one place. I made an account and I believe that I will use it in my future classroom and to share interesting information with others.

Thing Sixteen

• Which start page did you choose? Why did that one appeal to you? Will you make it your permanent home page? I chose iGoogle as my homepage. I had to create an iGoogle account in a previous blog post, and I am in love! It is my new favorite. It has everything from the weather to top news.

• How can the online calendars be useful to you? They can help you, as a teacher, to keep up to date with your class schedule and to keep you on track with upcoming dates, etc.
  
  
• What about the to-do lists—helpful, too much work…? I REALLY liked Remember the Milk. This site is an online task reminder that sends an email to you (and if you regularly check your email or get your email sent to your phone, you should never forget anything ever again!).
  
  
• Did you find a tool that has some uses for you at the school or at home? Which tool(s) would you recommend to others? Before I had taken this class, I was already familiar with the application on Macs (Stickies). I, personally, frequently use the Stickies to use as reminders for my to-do lists for the week and since I am on my computer a good majority of the time, it is really helpful.

This blog assignment was very useful to me, lots of different tools and ideas that can be used in our personal lives and in our roles as teachers.

Thing Fifteen

Wikis....ok, honestly, I had no clue what a Wiki was. It actually made me think of a Wookie from Star Wars. Wikis are actually a really useful tool. You can find a Wiki on anything that you need. For this assignment we had to add our "favorite" blog post so far from this experience and I chose Thing 12 from this blog to add to our class' Wiki. I really enjoyed exploring Google and finding out more information and more tools that Google had to offer. I found that blog assignment very helpful.

Thing Fourteen

Flowcharts and Mind Maps.... First of all...these are awesome. Although, I was NOT impressed with the flowchart maker on this site . The whole process was just frustrating to me, and was slightly difficult to navigate. However, this site was a lot of fun. It gave you options that you could use while making the chart (ex: after you make a bubble, you can hit Control and Enter at the same time and it will add a new bubble!) These tools are really useful to anyone, but especially useful to teachers and their students for assignments, lessons, to help out with a story, etc.

Thing Thirteen

Typically when I need to share a document with a person or a group I will just send an email with the document attached, and get various feedback from each person contacted through email. It seems like there would be something a bit easier to do to send the same document to numerous people and to share everyone's feedback with each other. Well, there is now! And until I was a part of this class I had never heard of either site/application. What are these magical sites, you ask? Zoho and Google Docs.

As stated before, I love Google. That is my go-to place if I have a random question, need to find lyrics to a song, or find articles for school. However, I was rather disappointed with Google Docs. Google Docs simply allows you to create a document on the site and it gives your document a URL to "share" with other people. Zoho, has MANY different options. I particularly found their Collaboration Apps options to be very useful anyone, but specifically businessmen/women and teachers. Through Zoho you can share your document(s) and get loads of feedback. If I had to choose, I would go with Zoho!

Thing Twelve

Ahhh Google. I loved Google before I knew about all of this fancy stuff it had to offer. I created an iGoogle account and I am in love. When I set it up, it asked my to select my interests, I checked Humor and Entertainment. It is GREAT! I'm just saying, if you choose Humor, you get a comic on your homepage everyday! Check 'em out above. I couldn't resist.

Google Translator is also pretty legit. I used it a lot in high school to complete my Spanish homework ;-), but in all seriousness, it is a pretty cool tool. You can translate anything! Which is a handy tool to have, knowing that it is easily accessible to you whenever you need it (to incorporate a phrase into your lesson to get the students listening, to actually communicate with a student who speaks a different language, or to translate the homework for a student). Once again, I am amazed at what Google has to offer, which makes me love it even more <3

:o)

Thing Eleven

Now that I have a Google Reader and know how to subscribe to others' blogs, the world is essentially at my fingertips! I simply looked at the list of Technorati, which led me to a screen with different categories. Anything you can imagine is available, someone somewhere is blogging about it. Since I am planning on doing some traveling of my own next summer, I naturally looked to see if there was a Travel category. Guess what? There was! Any many,many blogs at that! I chose this one in particular because I think it will be neat to see a couple's perspective on traveling and to see why they love traveling so much. I have also explored Pioneer Woman's blog and have found it quite useful-She is amazing! Technorati is super easy to navigate and gives you more options to look at than you could possibly know what to do with.

:o)

Thing Ten

• What do you like about RSS and newsreaders? These things are too cool! As previously stated, I had a blog prior to creating this one for EDU 3040. When I logged into my Google account, I already had a Google Reader account set up with an RSS feed of the personal blogs that I follow. I had no clue what RSS was, but now that I am familiar with it, it is pretty darn cool! I loved the feature in which when you clicked on the specific blog, it showed recent posts, and then as you scrolled down it marked the post as read! How cool is that?!
  
• How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your school or personal life? I can use this technology in both my personal and school life. It will keep me updated on personal blogs, co-workers blogs, educational forums, etc.
  
• How can teachers use RSS or take advantage of this new technology? By keeping up-to-date on co-workers blogs, other teachers around the world's blogs, and educational forums.

Thing Nine

For Thing Nine, we were to play around with different image generators. They were really fun to mess around with, I just couldn't come up with any clever catchphrases ;-)

The top two were made on ImageChef.com and the other was made on a smileyface generator txt2pic.com.

These image generators would be useful

tools to create images to assist learning

or even for decorations around the classroom.

Both sites were fairly easy to operate, to

figure out.

With each blog post, I learn more and more about the

technology that now fills our world. It is so exciting to

learn new things!

Thing Eight

A PUZZLE?! of one of my most favorite places on this earth-Coldstream Christian Camp where, this year, I will have served as a counselor for 7 years.

This is too cool! I had never heard of or used mashups before this class. Yet again, I am amazed by what technology has to offer us! These could be used in many ways in a classroom: for decoration, make puzzles out of picture of the students- the possibilities are endless. This would be a fun activity for the students as well, it is just neat to see their own pictures created to be something even more awesome!

Thing Seven

I have known about Flickr for a few years now, but had never really explored the site or had any interest to see what it had to offer. I am SO glad that exploring Flickr was a requirement for this class! Flickr may very well be the best thing since Justin Beiber and/or sliced bread. For this post we had to explore Flickr, learn some new things about Flickr (how to navigate it and so forth) as well as upload an image. I chose the one above brought to us by this guy. The reason I chose this photo in particular is because it is of a pub in Dublin, Ireland-A place I will be touring for a week next summer as well as the number one place on my "Places to See" list. Flickr is a really neat site and is a great place to share your photos with others, read their comments on your photos and others' photos, as well as a great place for you to get pictures for yourself or to incorporate in your classroom! Check it out! You won't be disappointed.

:o)

Thing Six

The site from the Web 2.0 Awards list that I chose to check out is Aviary.com. Aviary is an online photo editor and it is totally FREE! When I first went to the site, it looked like it was going to be a pretty cool website: intriguing homepage, bright pictures, seemingly easy to navigate. However, when I uploaded a personal picture and began to edit it, it seemed like none of the tools would work and I could not get the image to save. I don't know if the website runs better on a stronger internet connection or what, but either way I was not satisfied with this website. I believe that the site would have been a great resource if everything would have worked properly for me. The one thing that did work while editing was the drawing tool. The drawing tool would be fun for students, in that they can upload images of things that pertain to the lesson and can "draw" notes, etc on the image to use as a reference for studying, etc. All in all, this site was not as promising as I had hoped, and I can't say for sure if I will use this site in the future. If it works for you, let me know what I'm doing wrong!

:o)

Thing Five

Ok, so maybe I am out of the loop but I did not really know what Web 2.0 was, so I visited a link to it which took me to Wikipedia. Examples of Web 2.0 are "social networking sites, blogs, wikis, video sharing sites, hosted services, web applications, mash-ups and folksonomies". Then things started to make more sense, but I was not familiar with mash-ups or folksonomies....So I looked them up on Wikipedia as well. A mash-up is "a web page or application that uses and combines data, presentation or functionality from two or more sources to create new services" and a folksonomy is "a system of classification derived from the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content; aka Collaborative Tagging";"Tagging, which is one of the defining characteristics of Web 2.0 services, allows users to collectively classify and find information".

So now that I know a little bit more about Web 2.0 and all of the resources it has to offer, I am excited to see where "School 2.0" will take us. I believe that as the world gets more technologically aware, the school will naturally have to follow. As it stands, current students have grown up in a world of Facebook, YouTube, iPads, etc. so as a teacher, you have to "keep up" with the goings on, to effectively teach a group of students who have grown up in a technology infiltrated society. Things are changing for education, you just have to be willing to change and adapt to new things.

:o)

Thing Four

Finally!

Through this class, part of the process is to create a blog (obviously) and to learn new things from others and vice versa. For this post, I chose 3 different blogs to follow in this class:

-Jennifer Jackson's blog; Jennifer and I have the same classes for the Fall and have became friends over the past year or so. I am interested to see her take on things as we explore technology in this class.

-Amber Garris' blog; Amber and I had Education 3070 together last semester. She is a pretty smart cookie, so I am interested to see what neat things she finds as she explores different sites.

-Shatica Johnson's blog; I do not know Shatica personally, but she is in my class so I figured I would follow her blog to learn more about her and her views on educational technologies.

Also, by following a person's blog, you have the privilege of commenting on their blog and sharing your thoughts with the blogger themselves as well as other people who read that blog, also enabling you, as a blogger, to share your blog with others. Commenting allows you to share your opinions and ideas with others and to learn more about topics you didn't know of or didn't quite understand.

Thing Three

Blogging has many advantages and is very resourceful in many ways. One way it can be useful is sharing opinions, findings (websites, new curriculum, a teacher's forum, etc) for yourself and fellow teachers. Chances are there are other teachers out there concerned about the same issues or needing materials for the same subjects/topics, so blogging is a great way to achieve that type of effective resource. Blogging could also be used as a means of communication with parents. As a teacher, instead of a weekly newsletter sent to every student's home, you could simply update a blog designed specifically for your class in which you include the lessons, homework, school events, concerns regarding each class/class expectations, etc. Also, as stated in previous posts, this blog is a wonderful resource in which to communicate with fellow students also on this journey through Instructional Technologies.

:o)

Thing Two

Before this class, I actually had my own blog set up-granted I do not update it very often, but I do already have one in which I sort of use as an online journal as well as a means to stay in touch and update friends on the current goings on in my life. So, creating a blog was nothing new for me. What is always difficult for me is deciding on the look I want my blog to have (I change my background ALL the time). Also, deciding on a title is always tricky. With this blog, being as how it is about the 23 Things, I somehow wanted to incorporate "things" into my title. I decided on "Jessica's Many Splendored Things" based off of a verse in a song called "The Elephant Love Medley" from the musical Moulin Rouge. The movie is a recent favorite of mine, and the song immediately came to mind.

The avatar that I created for myself reflects me, as a person, in that I have dark hair, abnormally long eyelashes, my favorite color is pink, and I <3 coffee. The avatar was also really easy to set up and was fun to piece together.

I am looking forward to blogging for this class, because I am anxious to hear others' opinions and learn from their experiences in Instructional Strategies.

TTFN (Ta Ta For Now)

:o)

Thing One

To be a Highly Effective Lifelong Learner, there are 7 1/2 Habits that are suggested. The easiest one for me is Number One: To begin with the end in mind. I begin the semester, not looking forward to the class but, by seeing the "light at the end of the tunnel", knowing that it really does go by faster than I think and that I will feel a sense of accomplishment when the class is finished. The hardest habits for me are Number Two: Accept responsibility for your own learning and Number Three: View problems as challenges. I have never been one to enjoy studying or to enjoy learning, I see school as something that has to be done-I have to go to school to be able to have a good job. Unfortunately, when it comes time for me to study, I do not "jump the gun" and begin studying in ample amount of time, I wait too long and then forfeit my own learning experience. I also have trouble seeing problems as challenges, if I have two papers due in the same week, I automatically go into a state of panic rather than challenging myself and then feeling a sense of achievement when the "problem" is gone. These habits not only help you as a student, but in everyday life. A new goal of mine is to begin being a Lifelong Learner and incorporating these wonderful habits into my life as a student and as an adult.

Have a superfluous day! :o)