We've only just begun

My favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey were creating a video and Pandora.This program has affected my lifelong learning goals by making me aware that there are easier and more "green friendly" ways to save paperwork. I was surprised that there was normally 43 things instead of the 23 assigned in this class. I believe I will be referring back to this blog to help me practice while I'm learning to become a teacher. This should help me keep up to date with what is new.

Thing Twenty-Three

I clicked on FAQ on Dr. Wall's page to find that there is a website that has 43 Things instead of just the 23 that this class is said to do. THANK YOU DR. WALL :) I really enjoyed the video on the creative commons law. I believe that showing that to children will be beneficial because what kid does not like cartoons? They can learn so much from watching this ten minute film.

Thing Twenty-Two

The titles of my binders are "parents", 'Third Grade", and "Rules and Regulations".

Rules and Regulations

I believe that LiveBinders can be used in the classroom several ways. I created one binder that is just for me. It will link me to any website that has to do with teaching regulations for the country, state, or the city I live in. I also created one for parents. I made a tab with websites that will give parents places to visit so that they can help their children with their homework,another tab to give them ideas on what to do for fun with your children at home, and one for personal resources incase their child is going through some troubling times. I believe that if I made one for students, it would be very helpful in several ways. They could learn about different subjects per tab or something to that nature.

Thing Twenty

I enjoy YouTube so much. I have used it several times in the past. I used it to watch something that I have missed on TV (before I could record my shows) and I have used it to watch videos that people in my town have posted on there. Last year our neighborhood was hit by a tornado and someone drove around and videoed the damage. The only thing that worries me about this site is if it is child friendly. I'm sure there can be some type of setting created to help with that but I'm not sure. I chose the video that I did because I love the music that plays in the background, it has a good message, and it was created by a student. I'm using this site to show my Physics class an experiment on video since I am not allowed to do it in our lab. That is the power of YouTube!

Thing Nineteen

I was not a member of any online communities until now. I joined TeacherPop and the first thing I saw was a facebook guide for teachers. I kind of giggled because, to me, it seems like common sense on what people need to post or not post online and if they should allow their underage students to have access to it. Teacher pop seems interesting for now. We will see how well I like it later on down the road. I'm thinking that this online community will be beneficial to any teacher.

Thing Twenty-One

http://animoto.com/play/1S7Y04woL5bPDjHX4NKv5g Well, after about three tries, finally got my video done. My daughter is my inspiration and I wanted to make a video of me and her. I enjoyed doing this because it is something that I have done in the past. I use to make video's as gifts for my friends and family. It brought back so many memories when I was looking at some of the pictures of my little girl. I cannot believe how much she has grown. I'm glad I have this video to look back on too.

Thing Eighteen

It is important that educators know how social networking works so that they can have access to different items on helping them in their classroom. I have been a facebook user for a few years and I love it. I am able to stay in contact with my family that live in Germany and with my friends from when I was still in high school. I have several of my teachers from back then as friends on my facebook page. Without them, I would not be where I am today and I consider them a real "friend". I think it would be a great classroom tool or school application.The parents' of the students in the teachers class could join the page to check what homework assignments are and what is going on in the classroom along with looking at photos of what the students are doing.

Thing Seventeen

After creating an account with Delicious and reviewing the resources, I got a good overview of social bookmarking. I searched "educational technology" and found several bookmarks related to this topic. I got to see the comments other users have posted to get their opinion on the link. I believe that this would be a wonderful tool to use for teaching. I love the fact that you can access your bookmarks from anywhere. I can't begin to count how many times I bookmarked a page on my home computer and when I got to school or a friends house I forgot what the website was that I needed to pull up.

Thing Sixteen

I chose the igoogle start page. This appealed to me because of the design. I want to teach third grade and the background look real fun to me. I will not be making this my permanent home page because I have a system that I already use at my house. I'm a little old fashioned and I have a magnetic notepad on my fridge that my husband and I can both write on. We also have cell phone that can set up reminders when needed. The online calendars would be real useful because it allows you to write as much information as you need and showing a little icon as a reminder. With a regular paper calendar, you only have a little box to work with. The to-do lists were helpful but I enjoy writing mine on paper and crossing out things as I purchase them. It seems to work better for me. These tools would be great in the classroom so that the teacher and students can eliminate clutter and stay organized. I would definitely recommend igoogle to others even though I will not use it.

Thing Fifteen

Wiki would be really popular in my family. Especially on my husbands side. I have my family (parents in Camden, Tennessee, brother in Maryland and other members in Germany) and my husband has his (parents in Adams, Tennessee, brother in Indian Mound, others in West Virginia). We all get together once a year for a family reunion. Wiki would be a great tool for all of us to use to decide who is bring what food to our reunion. It would also be great to plan meals for Christmas and Thanksgiving. I love making a list on things that I need but I usually end up losing them before I can buy my items. I believe that I will be using wiki next week for our Thanksgiving at moms!

Thing Fourteen

I chose bubbl.us to try as my mind map. I love it! This would be a great learning tool for children when they are working on assignments. It is easy to use and I enjoyed doing it. The other tool I chose was flowchart.com. I picked a family tree, which was an already made chart, that I believe students would enjoy doing. It is important to know your family history. For example, I know I am asked about my family's medical history every time I go to the doctor.

Thing Thirteen

Zoho Writer is not for me. It was hard for me to understand and locate buttons that I am use to on Microsoft programs. I was trying to save my file on Zoho and could not figure out how to same it on my jump drive. I somehow saved it somewhere and cannot find it. Google is the better of the two in my opinion. Something that I like about it is that the whole class can have one login and each student can have their own input on the page whether they are in class or not. This would be great to use for a group project. The link below is what I created on the google drawing. https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1IWQQyX_Ag-rZY2d0pH_-5NqePV68-mXuEM3PkBHHH0Y/edit

Thing Twelve

After looking at each of Google tool, I choose Google Alerts and Google Calendar. I set up an alert for children's asthma because my daughter suffers from it and I would like to learn more about it. There may be a new discovery in the medical field that could help her with her attacks. I am going to try the Google Calendar to see if it will help me. I have a bad problem with forgetting things and I hope this will help me out. It says that I can link it with my phone and it will send me a message with a reminder for an event on any certain date that I set it up for. Both of these tools would be great for educational uses. The Calendar would be great for teachers to keep up with their everyday events in the class room and the Alerts would be great if the class is following a story. I am not familiar how to post a link to my calendar so I did a copy and paste. Hope it works! https://www.google.com/calendar/render?pli=1

Thing Eleven

I really wish I had faster internet. There is so much that I can be doing to help start out my teaching career and I just don't want to have to wait for my internet to load up so I can do it. I found that google was the easiest search tool for me. I have used google for several years and it is something that I am comfortable with. The most confusing to me was the Topix.net. I don't know why but it said my location was Missouri and it had a lot of pop up screens coming on. I found some feeds that relate to teaching. I need all of the inspiration I can get so I thought that was helpful.

Thing Ten

What I like most about RSS and newsreaders is the fast access you can have to the news and blogs that are of interest. I believe that this technology could be used in the classroom or personal life daily. I am the type of person who watches the news everyday. If I cannot watch it while I'm in class, I can read about it on this technology. Teachers can use it to help with their lesson plans.

Thing Nine

I always wanted a personalized license plate. I believe this tool would be great to use on PowerPoint presentations to make the lesson being taught more fun. It can also be used to make kids feel special. For example, if it was someone's birthday, you could create something to be displayed on the smart board with that student's name on it.

Thing Eight

This took me a minute to figure out how to post. I am finally getting the hang of this. I choose the word "mommy" because it puts a smile on my face. I love hearing this from my daughter. To be honest with you, hearing her call me "mom" kind of breaks my heart. I feel like she is growing up way to fast. I think this would be a great idea for using in a classroom. It would be neat to have the students create letters from some of their own art work and post the images online for others to use. I don't mind sharing pictures online as long as I know who has access to look at them. You never know these days...

Thing Seven

 

 http://www.flickr.com/photos/flicknwiththegrahamfamily/

I don't know about anyone else but I feel like I am a little behind on times when it comes to this new technology. It took me several years just to get on facebook and now it seems that I'm learning a new site everyday in our class with Dr. Wall (thank you). I'm honestly not sure if I would use flickr in the classroom or not. I thought that a facebook account would be a good tool to use for the class especially getting parents involved with their children's education. I had a hard time with the flickr website. I have mentioned in an earlier post that I live out in the middle of nowhere and my internet is super slow. I'm sure if I had faster speed then I could explore more and see what it has to offer.

Thing Six

As I am sitting her reading the directions on Thing Six, I chose www.pandora.com to see what kind on music was available. My four year old daughter is sitting behind me on my bed and I am trying to get her to take a nap. Pandora has children's music and in less than 3 minutes, I had some of her favorite music playing and she fell asleep. This site will be bookmarked and used very often.

Thing Five

What does School 2.0 mean to me? To me, it means that I have to catch up on some of the  new technology coming out. I think that it is wonder to use technology to learn in the classroom. Example, PowerPoint Presentations, Blogging, things to that nature. I just hope that it does not "take over the world". If we think about it, when we call a customer service hotline to get help with something, what happens? We do not get a live operator. We get a computer. Sometimes it's ok, other times I want to talk with someone. Same goes for education. Is it going to get to the point when we will not need teachers in the class room, just computers?
I believe that most of the technology that was shown in these links are helpful when it comes to education, I just hope that it does not get too crazy.

Thing Four

Commenting helps create a sense of community and interaction because it shows an interest in the subject that is being discussed. It shows that the reader cares and understands what is being posted and can help others by giving them ideas of a different way of looking at things. 

Two points that I found interesting from the readings about commenting were “You become part of the life of the blogger you are reading” and  “Only 1 out of every 100 Readers Comment on your Blog”. 

Reading a blog is like reading a book. Some are good and some are bad. If you enjoy a blog, then you can relate to it more. If you do not enjoy a blog, you might have something to say but it may not be good.  If one out of every 100 readers’ comments on your blog, that would make me want to write something worth reading.

The following are the names of the 5 blogs from our group that I selected to read and comment about.

1.      Rittenberry’s 23 Things

2.      M Donahue’s 23 Things

3.      Bellafatto’s Blog

4.      JRichardson Explores 23 Things

5.      Blair’s 23 Things

6.      Jessica Shaw’s 23 Things

7.      23 Stehle Hoots

I chose the three of the seven because I have had a class with them and was interested in what they had to say. The other two I chose randomly. The comments I left were positive and agreeing with what the blogger had to say.

Thing Three

I was thinking about some ways that a blog could be used in the education field and came up with several ideas. One of the main ideas was basically using it like facebook but strictly for teachers. Homework assignments can be posted on it, calendars, projects and anything that pertains to the classroom. Several parents have a hard time getting off of work to attend parent teacher conferences and things to that nature. They can stay up to date with school activities by reading the class room blogs.

Thing Two

I decided to choose an easy name form my posting name and name of my blog. I just used names that I have used in the past for other log ins. My experience in creating my blog was not so good. I live out in the middle of nowhere and my internet is not the best. I have been working on my blog for about two hours and think I would have enjoyed it more if I did it with faster internet. It seemed easy to do but I needed more speed.

My avatar reflects my personality and looks like me. I’m a blue jean, t-shirt kind of girl and that is the outfit I chose for my character. What you see is what you get.

Thing One

1. Begin with end in mind
I am beginning my journey with the end in mind. After taking six years off, I decided to come back to school. The end of this journey that I am on now is graduation. After graduation I start another journey, my career.

2. Accept responsibility for your own learning

Who else would be responsible for my learning? I am the one who wants to be a teacher. I am the one who decided to go back to school. I am the one who is suppose to be in class everyday to take notes and listen to the instructor. It is my responsibility to learn what I need to know to become a teacher. If I don't like it, then I should quit. But I love it, and I will never quit. This is my dream and I will do whatever it takes to learn what I need to know.

3. View Problems as challenges
I will have to say that this topic is my biggest problem. I started at APSU back in 2001. Since that time I have had several things come up in my life that slowed me down on getting my degree, or so I thought they did. Instead of looking at these problems as challenges, I stressed too much and put my education on hold. I now have a fresh start and I will face any problem as a challenge. What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.  

4. Have confidence in yourself as a competent, effective learner
I am really back at second guessing myself, I freak out when I take a text and I always think the worst. I took a quiz in a class the other day and had no idea what to do. I sat there for a few minutes and asked the teacher what exactly she wanted on this piece of paper she handed me. I could tell her everything she said in class that day and I knew that the information she went over was on the quiz. I got an email the other day and she said I made 100%. :)

5. Create your own leaning toolbox
In all honesty I had no idea what this was about. Too me, everyone will have different "tools" in their tool box. No everyone learns the same and have different ways approaching topics. I am interested to learn what other peoples ideas are for their "toolbox".

6. Use technology to your advantage
I am glad that I am taking Dr. Wall's class. I was introduced to Blogger this summer and I thought I know everything about it. Today, I learned how to post an Avatar of myself and how to change the layout of my page. There are so many other options that I can choose from to change my page and I'm looking forward to exploring these.


7. Teach/Mentor others
I started to volunteer my time this summer to help people in my class with their studies. I also have a four year old daughter that I teach/parent. We read books, play games and do several other activities that will help her become a great student when she gets to school. Today was my first parent teacher conference for my daughter's Pre-K class. I was told that she scored highest in her class with 100% on the testing they do to determine if she is learning at the right speed. They said that she should be reading a book by Christmas. This mommy is a very happy camper!

7.5 Play
I play everyday. Weather it be a board game, outside activity, school work or something else, I find that my "play time" is my "me time" and it helps me to relax, recollect and take control of what needs to be done.