Reflections

I learned a lot about the different tools available to both teachers and students on the internet.  I think out of all of the things I did I had the most fun with altering pictures and making posters.  Something I think might make this program a bit better is possible finding sites that don't make you create a account.  Some people do not like having to create a lot of accounts and having their information out of the internet.  I can maybe see myself using a blog in my classroom in the future, but I think that i would make it a class blog not a personnel one for me as a teacher.

Thing #23

As a teacher I think I would use creative commons as a tool to teach my students about copy right and licensing.  The students could also go on to the site to find information for topics that they would be learning about, and even add to some of the projects that are already on the site.

Thing #22

I listened to a podcast on the advantages of having a interactive white board in the classroom.  I found this podcast using podcastdirectory.com, I found this site to be the easier one to use.  I may or may not use a podcast in the future, it just depends on weather or not id would work for the unit that I would be covering.  In my travels through the podcast directory I did not find one that I would want to subscribe to.  I'm sure there is one out there that I would find interesting and would want to subscribe to I just didn't find it today.

Thing #21

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com

I had a really good experience using this site.  It took me through making the video step by step and I had my video completed in no time.  This is a video of my dogs, enjoy!

Thing #20

I had a good experience using YouTube.  I have used YouTube before because lets face it there are some funny videos on this site.  I chose a video from school house rocks because they are oldies but goodies.  I think that YouTube could be a very good tool with in a library or classroom.  If the site had some sort of educational site or a built in filter so teachers could filter out the videos that they wouldn't want students to see.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEJL2Uuv-oQ

Thing #16

I decided on a very basic start up page.  It has weather and news feeds along with a few other things, I like the set up and I think that I will keep it as my start up page.  An online calendar can be very useful if you check you check it in the morning along with your email.  A to-do list would be to much work for me personally.  It might be something very useful for other people I think that it just depends on the person.  The tool that I would find useful would be the PDF converter.  Some schools use Macs and students might have a PC at home so if you have them use this tool they will be able to open their work at home or school.  It would work for me to because I have a PC at home and more and more of the computers on campus are Macs, and I have some friends that run into the same problem so I would defiantly recommend this tool to them.

Thing #18

I think that it is important for teachers to know how social networks work because student's lives seem to revolve around their face book or my space page.I have a face book page my self and it is nice because it makes keeping in touch with family and friends a lot easier.  One of the other things that I like is that you can make your page and all of the information on it as private or public as you want.  I think that there could be some educational uses for a social network page.  A teacher could create a page for their classroom and they could post homework assignments and other announcements on it.  Also parents could post any question that they might have on there as well, because most parents have social pages as well.  At the end of the day there are both pros and cons to social networking sites.

Thing #13

So I can see how Zoho writer can be a useful tool both in and out of the classroom.  If you have a student who has a computer with internet but no word processing program this would be perfect for them to use.  As for in the classroom, you can have students create different projects or papers and have them publish their work on a web page or through a blog.  I think this is the kind of application that a teacher would be able to incorporate into a lesson they easily.

Thing #15

So I signed up for wiki and I tried using it but I could not figure it out.  However, I can see how it could be a useful tool for teachers to share information and material with each other.  You could also set one up for your class to allow the students to post pictures and information.

Thing #14

I would use flowchart.com and bubbl.us for mind maps and flowcharts.  I think that they had the best appearance out of the four.  I would defiantly use these in a classroom, because I know that I learned from flow charts and I think most student will as well.