One last thought.

I would have to say that I really did enjoy everything that I did on 23 things. I will keep learning from this since I will be using these tools in the classroom and I will never forget 23 things. I don't really think there is anything that we could of done differently it was all pretty easy and at your own pace. I will use this in my classroom. I love the idea of blogging. I want to keep it going in my classroom. Thank you Dr. Wall for 23 things and for showing me so many things in 3040.

Thing #23

I will use creative commons in the future with my students by having them know that you cannot steal someone's work. I am going to inform them that it is like them taking all this time to create, write, or draw something and then have someone get online and take it and distort it and make it something that you did not intend for it to be. Therefore, you put a copyright on it because it is your work and you do not want someone destroying your work and then taking credit for your work. My students will understand that they will have to have respect for other peoples work and that actually it is an illegal act to steal someones work. So, I will show them on Google how to search for items that they can use according to how we are using it. If we need to draw on something I will show them how to search for something that can be drawn on. Or if something just needs to be copy and pasted I will show them how to set that preference in searching. If I find a project that has things on it that were licensed and could not of been used I will take points off for that students project.

Thing #22

I chose "Lets get Baked with Matt and Dave" it is a vegan cooking podcast that has music behind it and has them giving recipes. They have a new music person every week that plays and these two guys are actually really fun and likeable to listen too. I listened to this podcast last night and I was listening to all the tasty foods that they were eating and it all sounds DELICIOUS! And it is all vegan which I am trying hard to accomplish. Somedays I do not do well at all in it because of cheese and yogurts but everything they are mentioning that they are cooking feels like I can almost taste it! I like their directions because it is very easy to use and they do not rush in the process. I would create a podcast for my students and I really do think that it would be beneficial for my students to listen to. Also this could be beneficial if I was going to absent for a day they could listen to my lecture over the podcast. And I am subscribing to Matt and Dave today!

Thing #21

Animoto is really the neatest thing I have done yet. I loved going through and picking out some embaressing pictures of my Fiance (husband by next saturday!) and putting them on there. I really got a good laugh about it. I liked how I could share who my friends and family were and I could chose pictures from my pc. Animoto I thought was going to be really confusing to figure out how to put the music all together and how to make it only thirty seconds but Animoto did all of that for me which I thought was really cool infact. I am not much of a person to do these things online because I think it will be too hard for me to learn and I would rather do something else with my time but Animoto gave me step to step rules. One thing that I did not like was how long it took animoto to create my video. I sat at my computer for about 15 minutes.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Thing #19

Before this class (Edu 3040) I was not part of any social communities. Since, joining this class not only have I discovered communities that I had no idea that excisted but I have joined one as well. TeacherPop is really amazing to sum it up. I never knew that there was a community of educators out there in the world on a website that share their life. I really like this website because in a way it is like facebook, which could be dangerous for me to become addicted too. I like how you can update your status and talk with your friends and the whole time you do not have to worry about if someone thinks your profile is bad or has something it is not supposed to or you find someone with inappropriate things on their wall because it is all monitored. Which I really enjoy. I think most things should be monitored and in my opinion that would stop a lot of crime. I could possibly use TeacherPop in the classroom not with the kids but with asking questions to other teachers about advice on how to teach a subject or what would be the best activity. Another social community that I love love love is Bake Space! I LOVE to bake and when I saw this website on 23 things I imediately went to this site. I love everything about Bake Space and how you can talk to memebers and they have a breakfast club which I thought was too cute and they also have recipies that I could follow. I believe its a bakers dream. :)

Thing #20

I chose on Youtube "How to write an A+ Thesis Statement" this is what my standard is about so I thought it was very appropriate. I really like this video and I wish I would of found it earlier because I could of used this in my microteach in my other education class. This video tells you everything you need to know about thesis statements. I might not show the video in class maybe only some of it so I could talk some, but I definately learned a thing a two about thesis statements myself. One thing that I disliked about the video was that is had to cartoons or images. Only the words that the speaker was saying. I thought they could of added some pictures or something to give it a little extra something that students might pay a little more attention to it. This would be an awesome website to apply to the library website. I love youtube and I really do think that it has some great things that teachers and students can use for educational purposes. I have used youtube for years now and most of the time this website always pulls through for me and helps me know how to do something by seeing it or finding a video that I am searching for a class to give an example.

Thing #18

http://www.facebook.com/lauren.g.finley?v=wall&story_fbid=118038238215568 This is my Facebook page that I probably have had for almost three years now. I honestly do think that it is important for Educators to be updated and to have a SocialNetwork like facebook/myspace. I believe that it is important because you can find educators all over the world. There are fan pages to TONS of Educational things. Also, Educators can get in there to check on violence maybe. If someone tells you that someone is making a bomb threat or something on their facebook you can get in there and check and get it taken care of before something happens. I have learned through these sites good and bad things. I have learned that you meet people from all over the world with the same interests as you do. It is a fun way to connect with people. One bad thing is that you have to be careful on what you put on your Facebook or Myspace because since you will be a teacher eyes are watching you all the time. I have had a myspace and I deleted it about a year after I had Facebook. I most definately think Facebook is the better of the two. It is more up-to-date and more socially networked than myspace. I really would not use this in the classroom honestly for any kind of educational purposes unless it was a take home assignment because you are not a loud of these networks in school and the students would not be doing their homework. They would be doing what we like to call "facebooking". So I could see myself have them find a fan page that relates to the topic of the lesson outside of class but nothing that we could do in class.

Thing #17

Social Bookmarking is the beesknees! I am familiar with some of this through facebook and how you can tag a friend in your pictures or an event that is about to take place and you want people to know who all is involved. Now that I have gotten more indepth with it through 23 things and learning about it through thing 17 I absolutely love it! This tool is very beneficial in the classroom. I could have students look at a certain website that I have bookmarked and if they wanted to go deeper into the subject they could with the bookmarks. This way students are not searching the web for hours to find information on a subject. I could take advantage of this so that I know that my students are not wondering off on the computer playing around I can walk around the classroom and know for a fact that they are doing what they are supposed to. This is also a good tool because students can get done with their work in one day if it a computer assignment instead of having two days planned out for it. Also, students can create their own bookmark with a project and bookmark pictures and quotes and all sorts of things to an english project I may have in class one day.

Thing #16

I chose Lifehacker and the reason I chose this one was really because of the name of the website. I need someone to hack into my life and get me organized! Therefore, I chose this website and I am very thrilled that I did because I love the online calender that it provides for me. I already made it my homepage and it is refreshing knowing that when I pull up my internet and my calender comes up and it has my to do list for the day I know what I need to do instead of worrying about forgetting something. The to-do lists are very helpful to me. When I have something that I can write on and I start to feel myself get organized I fill it all out, no holding back. This way like I said I feel accomplished when the day is done. I like how on this website it is very informative. I found one link that says "lack of sleep may cause gain in snack hunger". I think that LifeHacker could be very useful in the classroom. The children could be assigned like website of the day but with lifehacker and show us something that they think is important for me and the class to know. This activity could happen right before Christmas or at the end of the school semester for an easy grade. This is really neat to me and I keep searching on here because all of the websites are so different and range from one spectrum to the other but yet all so helpful.

Thing #15

I never fully understood what a wiki was until now. Wiki's are so neat! I wondered why wikipedia was not a realiable source to site from and that is because almost anyone can add their imput on what they think is the correct answer or definition or whatever is being told on wikipedia. I think wiki's and sandbox's that are in wikis are a fabulous idea when it comes to the classroom! In a way you can use this as an online journal and I could have my students write about what their favorite part of the lesson was -more for a story- and explain why. Then they can get on flckr and find a picture that goes well with the story and post it on their comment so everyone knows what they are talking about. Another thing they could do is collaborate with one another as a class. Sudents can come up with their own wiki about what something means and create their wiki to let the world know in their opinion what something means. Of course I would have to read it to make sure it appropriate. Overall, I am very excited about Wiki's and what I have learned today. I am always learning something new in this class and this is one thing that I am not going to forget because I really want to use this piece of technology in my classroom.

Thing #14

Mind Maping is where it is at! I really enjoyed . I normally do not like maping of ideas becuase it takes too much time and effort when I could already be started on my project. But it was quit different with Mind Map. I went to Gliffy and it took too much effort to get everything going and to start the process. I was a little peeved by the end of it but when I went to Bubble.us it was a different story. I clicked on new member start now and it had me making a mind map right then and there! I was so excited at how easy it was and how cute the bubbles were-yes I know but it's a girl thing! Then I realized that I could use this mind map website to help me come up with ideas for my final paper that is due next week. This will help me brainstorm and get my thoughts together before I write it all out and have to erase somethings because it does not fit well. This website is very beneficial to me because I am so unorganized when it comes to projects and papers. Mind mapping could possibly be my answer to a better organization skill. :)

Thing #13

I got to experience the fullness of Zoho last week. For some reason my microsoft office was not working and so I went to Zoho to write one of my papers. There are likes and dislikes that I have with Zoho. I really like the fact that it is easy to use and manageable. I wrote my paper no problem and it was easy to change my font and letter sizing. Now there are a couple things that I did not like about this software. I did not like the fact that I could not find out how to save my work. I had to copy and paste everything. Another thing that I did not like was that I could not figure out how to change the paragraph format of Zoho. So instead of it being double spaced it was single spaced unless you pressed the enter key. Other than those I liked Zoho because it saved the day for me. In the long run I will more than likely just stick with Microsoft Word because because it does have a lot more features and you do not have to have the internet to use it.

Thing #4

Commenting opens up the world of blogging. It opens up conversation and intellectual conversation with one another. When people comment it lets the bloggers know that what they have to say is important, fun, or even soemthing to disagree to. In my opinion I think that there would not be very many bloggers out in the world if no one commented on them. Why write something to the world and have no response? My first blog I commented on was Darlena Gary. I commented on hers because I really agreed with her thoughts on about igoogle and her google calender. Next was Christy Wilson and I commented on her blog about pictures. I commented because her post was fun and fresh and I really wanted her to know that I thought that way. Della Proctor was next for me and I commented on her blog about picture editing. The main reason why I commented on this blog was because I know Della from high school and the people in her pictures were also from high school and I thought it was so cute how she edited her pictures. It made me have a wholesome laugh about it. Alexa Tyler had a great idea for using Spell in her classroom for the children to have name tags instead of plain jane ones and I thought that was really neat and thoughtful, so I let her know. The last person that I commented in class was to Lakisha Tramill and it was about her great post on cooking and the website she found! She found this website that allows you to watch people cook online and different recipes from all over the world and you can put your own recipe in. The two that I chose that were not in the class room were by Elena and the other was by Lauren Ulm. Both these ladies had blogs about recipes for vegans and Lauren's blog became so popular that she created a book! I am planning to go pick her book up this weekend it is called "Vegan! Yum Yum!" Both these ladies recipes looked so delicious my mouth started watering. I chose to make encouraging and agreeable comments. I think comments should be supportive and happy. When commenting I made sure that nothing but praise came out and excitement for what they had to say and thought about.

Thing #12

I love google. I have Picasa downloaded to my computer and I love all the features that Picasa can do for me. It was free and it is so easy to work and play around with your pictures. I also have a google calender. I love this feature because I have to be organized with school and know when is what. Also, I am getting married in May and I literally think it would be impossible for me to remember everything I had to do with school, work, and wedding scedules if it was not for this calender. I think these tools would be great for a classroom. I would probably introduce the igoogle webpage and the calender and have students set one up for themselves and some children would actually enjoy having something online to keep up with their schedule because everything is internet now a days for children. igoogle could allow my students to check world news and see whats going on around the world because most students have no idea what's going on outside their town.

Thing #11

When I was searching for feeds I found Google and Technorati were the easiest for me to search for what I wanted. Google to me was the easiest to find what I was looking for. I wanted a vegan recipe site and it gave me exactly what I was looking for. The most confusing to me was Topix. There was so much going on everywhere and I did not see a search bar for me to look for my feed. I only could find a place to put in your zip code. I really did not like this website. Also, Sindic8 was... very boring. To me it honestly looked like someone had made it in the nineties and forgot to update it. Everything is so aquare. I just became vegan not too long ago so I am new to everything about it so I found neat websites and blogs about things/recipes that vegans can eat and how to substitute for dairy products. Things that I found were not so nice was a blog about calling vegan's nut-jobs because a vegan got upset. Anyone can become upset. The tools that I used was just to type in what I wanted and I waited to see what came up. These feeds were a lot more helpful than using google search. I felt like it was more on a personal level reading some of theses blogs.

Thing #10

Wow! I am always amazed at the new things I keep finding. I never would of thought that there was a website that keeps up with your websites that you like and then lets you know when something new is going on. AWESOME! I like RSS for the tracking that it is doing with my websites and recipes and all sorts of things. I always like knowing whats going on in the world so it is nice to know that I am only ONE click away from knowing the news. I will definately be using this in my personal life to keep up with all my favorite websites and I think teachers of all people can benefit from this website. Teachers can put all their education websites on RSS and instead of having to open up many tabs they can just open up one website and vuala! There is all the websites that they might need.

Thing #9

Now this was neat! I took forever trying to find the right ones for each. I honestly did not know that doing these things were that easy. I would of done these types of things a long time of ago if only I knew how easy and carefree it was. For the magazine one I just clicked on the link in 23 things for customizing and then it asked me to upload a picture so I uploaded one of my engagement pictures then I could pick what I wanted to do from frames, scrapbooking, magazines, adding text, adding a scene behind the picture, the possibilities were endless! So, I chose magazines then it had lists and lists of pages so I went through about five of them and I chose the perfect one for Richard and I. Then on my second one I did the same things with a picture of my little family and I chose scrapbooking. Again it had lists and I chose the one I liked the best. I could use this in a classroom by having the kids involved and maybe make like a little scrapbook/magazine about the story we are reading and find pictures that they best thinks describes the story or the lesson.

http://graphics.imagetemplate.net/scrapbooking/?template=0-600-584-i_love_you_so_much-65_224_412_307

http://pictureimage.brinkster.net/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fimageshack%2Eus%2Ftransload%2Ephp%3Furl%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Efototrix%2Ecom%2Fuploaded%2F68%2D114%2D141%2D106%2DRECENT%2Ejpg

Thing #8

I enjoyed doing this name match up so much! I think I sat there for thirty minutes just trying to find the right letters that I liked. I could use this in my class by introducing a subject with these letters in any grade level or on the first day of class have all the students names printed out like this and put there names on the desk and that will be where they sit for the semester depending on the grade level. I think sharing photos online is a great and bad thing. I think it is a great thing for educational purposes and finding new things like the jellyfish I found in my last blog but I think it is a bad thing when nude pictures or unwanted things are on the internet to aid peoples addictions. That is when I think sharing pictures on the internet is a bad thing.

Thing #7

When I visited Flickr I first went to tulips because they are my favorite flowers. After I got through with tulips I wanted to look up thunderstorms because to me western thunderstorms on a plateau are just so transforming. But then I thought of something that I think are the most beautiful creatures and I wanted to see what kind of photographs they would have on here. So I looked up jellyfish and I found this picture. It is so beautiful to me! All the colors in this picture are so unique and I could look at this picture and just feel so tranquil. Thank you Miron Podgorean for putting this picture on Flickr for people like me to enjoy and stare at. :)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mironp/1320853031/

Thing #6

I chose Picasa (http://picasa.google.com/). I have previously used picasa in my technical writing class and we had to write and compose a manual on how to use picasa. I really enjoy picasa because you can edit a picture just about anyway you want to. Then when you are done with the picture you can keep all your pictures in a google account and it holds all the pictures you could of ever wanted to save. You can tag people and one of the features that I really enjoy about Picasa is that you can make a collage and choose different styles on how you would like it to look. Also you can download it for free on your computer and it imports all your pictures automatically. I really cannot say that there is something that I do not like about this photo editing site. My students could use this site and take all their pictures and make them into a collage and on the first week have them come up and explain who they are and show their collage to the class so the other students and I can get to know everyone on a personal and professional level.

Thing #5

Web 2.0 means to me that the world is opening up to new things, education, ideas, cultures, creativity, and so much more! When I think back to when I was in seventh grade the internet was just something to use AIM, email, and to google. The internet was nothing to brag about back then. Now that Web 2.0 is out and about, there are so many posibilities and opportunities. Now I can look at books online, watch a music video, talk to someone from another country for free through the internet. With education children can watch videos on how things can be accomplished. Say you teach a science class instead of trying to explain how to do something you can just youtube the information and you can teach your class as the video is playing on how to disect something. This way visual, auditory, and hands-on learning is all happening in the same class period. Students can create websites and create pictures, there is so many things that can be done with Web 2.0 for education. Ultimately, Web 2.0 is changing lives.

Thing #3

I think that I could use this blog system when I become a teacher to help my students do research and expressing their thoughts on a story or poem. My students will create their blog and then after reading a story or a blog in their english class which I will be teaching they can get on their blog site and write about how they felt about that story. If they liked it they will write about what they liked and if they did not like it, write about why they did not like it. When we read a poem and it is not really clear on what it is about I will let my students write about it in their blog about what they thought it was about, then when everyone is done we will discuss what everyone put.

Thing # 2

I have to admit, creating this web blog was a little out of my element. It took me quite a few minutes to figure out what I was doing and where I was going on the internet. I would not say it was hard for me but it was not easy as well. Creating my blog just took some effort because I had never done something like that before. My experience was great though, I had a friend who sat beside me to help me along. My favorite thing about creating the blog was creating my avatar! I probably sat at the computer for an hour picking out my avatar. I think it reflects me in a way. I have blonde hair and I love my dog to pieces so I had to put a dog sitting beside my little me.

Thing #1

I have always thought of myself as a lifelong learner. I enjoy learning new things and researching things that are interesting. When I read the 7 1/2 lifelong learning tips I related to many of them. The ones I related to the most were viewing problems as a challenge, using technology to my advantage, accepting responsibilities for my own learning, and playing. All four of these qualities of learning comes easy to me. I always find myself finding the good in everything so instead of getting stressed out about a problem I try to see the positive outcome and what I am going to learn from this. I never blame someone if I am running behind on a homework assignment and technology is my best friend when it comes to school work. I honestly do not think that I could survive college without a computer because I am so used to its helpfulness. I could not imagine living twenty years ago and not having a computer and only using books.
Other times I have a hard time with learning. When I have a huge project that is due and I feel trapped and like it is never going to end, I honestly feel like it is never going to end. So one aspect of learning that I need to work on is beginning with the end in mind. Also, when I cannot see the end in sight I lose confidence in myself. So it is like a bad rippling affect for me. I should start a project out with the end in mind and believe in myself and know that when I get done it will be fabulous.