SUMMARY

WOW is one way to describe web 2.0.  I knew absolutely nothing about it until I started the 23 things.  I am completely amazed at how much technology is out there to use from the internet!!!  This has definitely been an eye opener for me.  I absolutely loved Animoto, Zoho, Snapfish and Flickr.  I was already familiar with Facebook and use it on a daily basis to keep up with family and friends.  The blogs, chatboards and tweets, I am still not so sure about? Many were hard for me to understand how to use and it seemed like I signed up for a gazillion things, but on the other hand I can see these being used as a great tool for your classroom by starting your own blog, chatboard, or even a classroom Facebook page just for your class, that parents and students can utilize to share and keep up with what is going on in their child's classroom and to ask questions.

I know that I will be utilizing the Web 2.0 always, it is the  now  and the future.  I used to be scared to try anything on the web, download anything and basically don't have a lot of patience for a lot of it.  I now am not scared to try stuff on the web and felt a lot of satisfaction when I finally figured out how to do one of the THINGS that frustrated me, sometimes for hours.  Then I was completely amazed at how easy some of it was, especially Animoto or maybe it was at that point my fear of the "net" had gone away??? Anyways I am glad I have completed the 23 things and look forward to exploring more sites and useful tools in the future.

Thing 23

Creative Commons is  great! How nice to find and be able to use work on the internet and know what legally you are allowed to use and how to use it.  An example for an attribution  is actually at the bottom of thing 23 it shows that this site was created from an attribution at the bottom of the page with a link to the Creative Commons site. I will definitely be using Creative Commons for many uses in the future and I will definitely share this site with my future students and encourage them to use this for their school projects.

Thing 22

First I listened to educational podcast directory it seemed silly and had to much ambiguous stuff in their pod casts and didn't seem very user friendly.  I think maybe I didn't like it because there was to much garbage at the beginning of the podcast and didn't really go straight to the subject.

Podcast Alley didn't really suit me either.  I am sure it has something to do with not navigating it correctly, but it didn't have what I wanted either.

Next I listened to one Learn Out Loud on earth and the effects cell phones can have on us from and felt these were more of what I was looking for when it came to a science podcast. I can see using this site in the future it had all kinds of subjects to choose from and I liked the format.
earth

thing 21

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

This was so easy and fun!! I was able to pull photos from my Facebook account and I used the music offered from animoto. It was nice to use a site that was so USER friendly. I have a feeling I will probably pay to make longer videos. I think this is my favorite site so far that we have used.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

I think this could be very addicting...YIKES!!

Thing 20

I chose these videos because it really does show how we as educators need to embrace technology. I am one of those who is struggling to learn more and more about all that is out there and how to use it in the classroom. Hopefully school districts will start embracing technology more and train teachers better at using it in the classroom and allow more access to the internet for students in their learning.

Thing 19

I am a member of facebook and myspace as mentioned in thing #18 and enjoy facebook alot.  I am currentely waiting on a confirmation from the APSU social network so I will get back to that? I checked out bakespace and joined it. It seems like it might be a fun site to explore and I might look more into it later.  For me belonging to all these blogs,networks and chats is just not very feasible I have a hard enough time keeping up with day to day activities  let alone online communities.  Hopefully I will find more time or interest in the future to really dig into these numerous sites and find something I really like.

I have now officially joined the social network TeacherPop for APSU....I think I added a badge, but not sure if it worked and I uploaded a couple of photos, which was very easy to do.. teacherpop.

Thing 18

I already had a facebook and myspace accounts and use my Facebook daily. I originally created both of these accounts to monitor my daughter on them and found quickly that I became addicted to Facebook.  I was able to reconnect with many people that I hadn't seen or heard from since I left home back in 1990.  I don't really use  MySpace  much or really at all.  I just check it once in awhile to check up on my teenager.  I am not sure how to create a link to my profile without letting people into my account so I am going to do a print screen for now until I figure that out?

Thing 17

I found delicious very nice and went ahead and created an account. I like the aspect of being able to sort my bookmarks easier I had a lot that I imported from my firefox bookmarks and now they all show up on the left side of my screen.  I definitely need to clean them up and organize them better and this tool will help a lot.  I like the fact that I can access this from any computer and not just my own.  I think this is advantageous for teachers because there are so many sites out there and it would be nice to see what others are finding. I can see the potential in a classroom for students to be able to access sites from school. 

Thing 16

I chose igoogle, because I already had the page I just hadn't made it my homepage yet, which I did and yes I do plan on keeping it my homepage.  I thought it was cool that it would go straight to my facebook account once I set that up so i can keep up with that as soon as get on the computer .  I went ahead and created the online calendar with google too.  Not sure if this will be useful or not, because I still use and old fashioned calendar book to write everything down so I think that and the to-do lists might just be more work for me to keep up with?  I thought the getting things done was interesting and fairly informative.  The top 25 web apps article is great and I plan on exploring more of these apps to help me in the future with my classes and with teaching in the future. I would definitely recommend the igoogle page to others.

Thing 15

Wiki's what a great concept.  I really like the idea of a classroom Wiki.  What a great way for the teacher to communicate with the class and for students to communicate with each other and give ideas to each other on projects and assignments and to have links to websites that can help the students with assignments.  I liked the one where the teacher set it up that the public can view it but only the students from that school can join. I commented in APSU sandbox on the life long learners http://apsu23thingssandbox.pbworks.com/Lifelong+Learning.

Thing 14

Bubble.us seemed to be the easiest to use after playing around with it for awhile. I can see using it again for a project. On the other hand I found mindmeister hard to explore and in order to do more you had to pay for a better level to use more features.  It was nice that there was a tutorial to watch and it helped a little, but I was having a hard time getting it to do what I wanted, I think this was due to I was trying to use the free version? So I would choose Bubbl.us over mindmeister.com.  For flow charts gliffy was fun and seemed fairly easy to figure out and I can see using it in the future for a class project. Currently I am still waiting on an invite  from flowchart so I haven't been able to explore it yet.

Thing 13

I like this idea of having online word processor's.  It would be nice to access a document you are working on from anywhere and be able to work on it from any computer instead of having to take your laptop with you especially if you are going out of town.  This didn't seem very difficult to set up and I liked that it was easy to import any document you already have in your computer and you can save in your Zoho account.  Seems like a good way to keep important documents backed up. 

I typed the above paragraph in Zoho writer and sent it to the blog as a draft and it worked!!...How nice no copying and pasting from word.  It was very simple and easy to do.