Thing 23

When I went to the first class and heard about all the things we were going to learn about it was like hearing a new language. I am truly amazed by all the things that the Internet has to offer that I didn't know existed. My favorite thing from this course was learning about and playing with Flickr. This is something I will definitely use for myself. I also really liked the google Docs. It really seems it could make working on group projects much easier. Wiki is something I would like to try out at work and use with my colleagues. The program I teach is for young children and it is for low income families. I am not sure how many of these things I will actually be able to use with them. I want to continue to play with all of these things so I feel more comfortable and will be able to actually be able to introduce others to them also. Thank you for opening my eyes to all the things the web has to offer. It is truly amazing and overwhelming.

Thing 22

Wikis. I found editing a wiki and designing one to be very easy. I designed my wiki to allow my students families to sign up for a home visit and give us directions to their house. If my families really used this it would save a lot of phone calls and questions to what dates and times you have available. One problem I could see though was a person who wanted a certain time could go in and erase someone elses name and put theirs in. I believe with a little playing around I could come up with some things that I could really use a wiki for.

Thing 21

Thing 21 was all about wikis. I did not realize what wikis were let alone know that wikepedia was a wiki. I was very impressed by many of the wikis I saw. I particularily loved the one that had children in New York comparing weather and other things with children who lived in New Zealand. I really think wikis could be useful when working with any group of people. It would make it very easy to see it as a work in progress. I am looking forward to working with wikis and seeing if I can't make some tasks at work easier to deal with.

Thing20

Learn about podcast using the different tools. I did not like using iTunes. I had never used it before and had a difficult time getting it downloaded to my computer. Once I finally got it to work I was surprised at the vast podcasts there were. It seemed very easy to subscribe to the podcasts. I liked using EPN more for finding podcast.

Thing 19

Thing 19 was about podcasting. I am surprised that there is so much out there available through the computer. I found that I could spend many hours looking through everything that is out there. I teach preschool and don't think I will be able to use it in my classroom but will enjoy exploring it for my own use.

Thing 18

Thing 18 was slideshare. I found this site overwhelming. I had no idea of a topic to search for. I ended up looking for Children's books. I do not know what memetales is but I liked what the slide show said about getting children interested in reading. I think this site would be great for people that put together lots of presentations. It would allow you to look at other people's presentations and give you examples of what to put in your presentation. I do not see my self ever using this site again. It is nice to know it is out there though.

Why you should read and fall in love with children's books

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Why you should read and fall in love with children's books

View more presentations from memetales.

Thing 17

I tried the productivity tool 30 boxes. It is a calendar you can type in your schedule, share with friends, get reminders, etc. One thing I thought was really cool was that I could link it to my facebook account and it input all the birthdays of my friends that I clicked on and put them right into my calendar. This saved me a lot of time. By putting in your zip code it also gave you a forecast for the weather for the next couple of days. I liked this tool. It could be a good way to keep the family schedule up to date. Once things are input you could print it and put it on the refrigerator for everyone. You can also add e-mail addresses to share your schedule with other people. I may try more with this tool over the summer.

Thing 16

I LOVE Google documents. I can think of a ton of ways we could use this for work. Instead of all those attachments and our feedback we could immediately make changes. I am going to introduce this to people at work so we can do things more effectively. I thought it was so cool that on the spreadsheet we could add our info and everyone could see it. I am very excited to play with this more over the summer.

Thing 15

This thing took me a little time to be able to figure out. I ended up subscribing to the New York Times. It is amazing all the feeds that they send you. I also subscribed to the tag education on my delicious account. I am hoping I can find some interesting articles by using this tag. It seems pretty easy to clean up your feedroll. I really like the idea of renaming things so that their names fit nicely in our folders.

Thing 14

I enjoyed exploring Delicious. It is a great way to remember all the sites I like to visit. It seems very user friendly. I put a lot of the sites I use on a regular basis into it immediately. I hope to spend time adding more and more sites that I find. I can't believe I did not know about it sooner.

Thing 13

Social Bookmarking

I found this lesson very interesting. The idea of having all of your favorite sites all on a web page seems like a great idea. I like the idea of being able to access my sites at both home and work. I also like the fact you can look at what other people have found. Tagging seems like a good way of organizing things especially if you use similiar tags as other people so you can find things that you like. I think I will try using these tagging practices.

Thing 12

I can not believe that there are so many things that you can put on your blog page. I was surprised you can put different games on. I tried hard to put a game on but it kept coming up as a third party contributor and I just ended up using the one that they had available. I really liked having the calendar right on my page.

Thing 11

I liked making comments on other blogs as a way to share similiar comments. What I disliked about it was that I worried a little bit about what people would think about my comments. I tried to stick with the guidelines that the articles pointed out. When I recieved my first comment I felt good that someone was actually reading the stuff I was taking the time to post. I think on line communication is good for online communities as a way to share info back and forth with people with similiar thoughts and get new ideas. I think students sharing their work would get immediate feedback and from people who would not usually see their work. I think hearing from people who are going through the same process as you really gives you something in common and makes you feel good. That is all for thing 11.

Thing 10

This is the life cycle of a plant. This was of interest to me because I have been teaching my preschoolers about plants.

THing 9

I have never really used You Tube. There are so many different kind of videos out there. I watched many on different TV shows I have watched over the years. I liked being about to see different clips from Friends over the years and also Happy Days. The video I chose to comment on was Charlie Brown Teacher. I love hearing the teachers voice. It truly reminded me of my childhood and what I think a lot of kids hear when there teachers talk.

charlie brown teacher

charlie brown teacher

kids sledding

kids sledding
Originally uploaded by ResslM01

THing 6

Thing 8

Thing was very cool. There are some very cool tools out there to use with your pictures. My children would really love for me to make some things for them. I think I could have a lot of fun and plan on going back to this too. I found this task to be time consuming. I used Big Huge Labs to create a magazine cover.

Thing 7

Thing 7 was pretty cool. I did have some problems watching the videos. They ran very slow and kept stopping and reloading. I found uploading my pictures to Flickr to be pretty easy. I think this could be a nice way to share pictures with my family and my students families. I will continue to play around with uploading photos.

Thing 6

I think Flickr looks like a very cool sight. I love my photos and wonder if this will be a good sight to share them on. I downloaded a picture of sunshine because I am so ready for summer.

Thing 5

I was a little overwhelmed on the blog page. This was interesting having us practice subscribing 3 different ways. I was able to get all three to work but when I tried to subscribe to somethings for myself nothing happened. I was able to subscribe to a few and they asked for which folder and so one but I couldn't get all of them to do this. I guess I need to keep practicing.

Thing 4

Blogline set up done. I had a little bit of a hard time setting up the folders because I had to give my computer permission to open the site. Now everything is done and I am on to thing 5

Thing 3

It is very interesting to see how different people use blogs to communicate with people with similiar interest. I do think blogs could be a great way for teachers to communicate with families and students. I especially like how one teacher listed the weekly homework and had a form for the students to do their book report online. As a parent this would make homework very clear and your child could not say they forgot what their homework was. Some day maybe I will try to do more with my blog but for now it is on to Thing 4.

Thing 2

Wow, this is the world of blogging. I have used blogging briefly while taking a different class but is defiantly new to me.

Thing 1

Watching the video for thing one really proved I am out of touch with technology. There were so many terms that I did not know or understand. What is Wiki? I didn't know you had to have an account to use google and I even have a realitive who works for google. Technology to me is using e-mail, facebook and my MP3 player in my classroom.

While watching the video I did realize that there really was some good ways to communicate with the students and their families that I would have never of thought of. I do think we need to try some new things to attract better communication with the students.