Thing #20

I have taken a class with the district on Google Docs and I loved it. There is so much you can do with them. My thoughts for documents were:

 1. Creating a spreadsheet of your students and their parents information.

    Like email, phone numbers, student ID and addresses.

2. Sending out information to your parents for parents night or for an        upcoming project their child will be doing.

3. When you are pushed for time and you need to have a meeting with your team then you can send them a document on your idea and let them add their thoughts or make changes where necessary.

Thing #19

This is a really neat tool. It is interesting to see how a whole class could comment on one picture or work on a project together. I wish this would have been invented when I was in school. How cool is this? I have looked at several and I really like South Paris Language Channel. I am amazed at all of the new technology that is out. It is always a great to learn how to say different phrases in different languages. Our children have so many more opportunities that we did growing up. This is really a great tool. I think we could do a science project on this. In kindergarten we did a science project on ice the other day. Does an ice cube melt faster in hot water or cold water? We could take a picture and let the students comment on what they thought. That would be fun.

Thing #18

I attended a government class at Eastfield College and this is a video that our professor used to teach us how a bill becomes a law. I like the video and I also think it is a cute way to teach our younger students about law making. I also think this is a very good learning tool. I think it is easy enough so even our elementary school students could learn. Most of our students in all grades are technological learners. 

Thing #17

Podcasts are very interesting. They are a good learning tool. I work with Kindergarten. I think the Share the Earth podcast was good for recycling day. I wish I would have found it when we did City of Mesquite recycling day. There are snappy little songs that get the kids attention. 

There is a podcast that I liked for the older children like mine. You can find The Founding Documents under the podcast called Learn Out Loud. This is a very interesting site. I think it might help me in my History class in college.

Thing #16

LibraryThing is AWESOME. I loved it. I love to read. I read many a lot of Christian Fiction, mainly Karen Kingsbury. I also read Suspense and Crime Dramas. I think this is great. i also like the 50 or more club. I think that is a great idea. I would like for my kids to do this. Although I do not think I would call it the 50 or more club. With my oldest daughter we could do the 20 or more club and with my youngest we could do 10 or more. I would have them set goals of their books. We could make frequent trips to the library. An incentive would also help for my youngest daughter, she's 11, she hates to read. I think this might motivate her to read more. 

I may try this. Even with the kindergartens that I work with. We could have a 5 or more club for a month or some other kind of incentative to get them to read. Thanks for this insight.

Thing #15

Delicious was interesting, I found it fun and exciting to use. I have many different bookmarks that I use and it is great to have them all in one place and knowing that I can access them from anywhere. In jkcoleman's bookmarks, there are a variety of bookmarks.

I will be attending Eastfield College for the spring semester in January so I could see myself using this for that but not for my classes that I work in. 

Thing #7b

I read something I thought was interesting. It was an article about the finding of the HMS Ontario. This was a 22 gun warship. It was found at the bottom of Lake Ontario. It was found using a side-scanning sonar and an unmanned submersible. This has been the oldest and the only ship that has been found that was still very much put together. It is a British Warship. This ship is a resting place for those that served aboard it. There were six bodies that were found near Wilson, New York. It is suspected that these men were from the HMS Ontario. If you would like to see the video of finding this ship click here.

I think it looks neat to be able to see this video.

Thing #14

I used wordle. I really liked it. I am not a teacher but I know that my children would like it. I think their teachers might like to use it too. It could be used in creative ways. 

Thing #13

I thought this was a lot of fun. It was pretty easy in the ones that I chose. The first one is spell with flickr. This was pretty cool. The other one is Image Chef. I like this one the best of all. The flower text. I couldn't choose between which one I liked best for my blog so I picked both.

Thing #12

I took pictures of my family and created a slideshow. It took quite a while to get this together. I was not sure of what I was doing. I really found this to be a lot of fun. It was quite a bit of work but very rewarding. I am proud of myself. I haven't done this before. Once I got it going it was easy. These pictures are taken from different events. 

Thing #11

I chose this picture of a saxophone because I thought it was neat and because my daughter plays this instrument. She has been playing since last year. She usually plays the alto sax but she is also playing the tenor sax this year as well. This is a picture of the Houston Texas Southwest Saxophone. It is made out of Volkswagen Beetles. This picture was taken by mrchriscornwell.

Thing #10

I found thing #10 interesting. I did not notice the cc logo on any websites until recently. I think this will make projects easier to create. Their are so many cool tool and options. I really don't use digital images or video clips from the web. Although after this class I may be able to do a lot. It's sad, because I did not know there was so much that you could do on the web. I am learning a lot about the web through this class.I do not teach therefore, I do not have any teaching material. I am not sure about the potential negatives unless people could still use these tools and claim them as their own, without acknowledging the original author.

Thing # 9

WOW! This has been the hardest one yet. I have stayed up long hours at night after my children have gone to bed to try and figure this one out. I hope I have it right.  

Check it out and see what you think Jenikay. 

I thought this was a lot of work but at the same time a lot of fun. I don't know for sure if I was able to add myself to the sandbox or not. I have tried a lot of times. I am not sure if it took. 

HELP if you can.

Thing #8

This is so cool and exciting. I love the idea of wikis. It is something that is fun for the students as well as for teachers. I can see that it takes a lot of work.

The organization is something else. Everything is set up so easy to access. 

I looked at a few. One of the ones that I looked at was called Kindergarten Counting Book. I thought that the content was very creative. The things they used to count with were things that you will find in a Kindergarten classroom. I am a Kindergarten Instructional Assistant. I work with a lot of small groups, and I think these little ones learn easier with things they can relate to. Things like blocks, counting bears, cubes and anything that is more hands on type things. I loved the little Christmas Tree snack cakes (who doesn't like something sweet).

Another one that I looked at was Primary Math. This was creative. It is for our older students. I liked it. I know that my children love to do things on the computer. It grabs their attention. It is always very exciting for me to see their little eyes light up when they get to do something fun and new. I have found that I keep their attention longer and they seem to remember more.

Thing # 7

I did not know how powerful commenting can be. After reading some of the blogs I understand how important commenting is.

It is exciting being able to read what others think about different topics. It is also really neat to be able to talk to different people who share the same thoughts on those topics as you do.

Thing #6

I think that it is amazing how far we have come in technology. To the point that we can video people with out their knowledge and put it on youtube for the world to see. In this clip NEA Today videos it talks about a music teacher allowing his students free time in class. While pretending to sleep one of his students video taped him. That video clip was added to youtube. There were some upset parents and so was the principal. Luckily this ended on a good note, there were not any charges brought against him.

In Japan there is a lady whose virtual world husband was giving her a virtual world divorce. This caused her to kill her online digital husband. She was arrested for charges on hacking. 

I think these are pretty extreme to me. I am kind of shocked that technology is so advanced that our children can video something and add it to the web, and yet most of them never get their work done in class. A lot of them are failing in some of their classes. Those are the kids that we can reach and teach through learning with technology. 

I don't know what to say about the lady in Japan. That blows me away. I didn't know that people take the virtual world on the web so seriously.

Thing # 5

I read an interesting blog Think Different. I agree we should let our students be more creative but giving them projects and not telling them how to do them. Letting them create their own masterpieces. Most of the time we tell our students what to do and how to do a project instead of letting them find out for themselves. I think we should allow them a class that lets them be creative. Let them be free to think of their own project. Where it may be a song they have been thinking of, a painting, a book they want to start or even a poem, whatever it is let them express their talent without having to be told the way to do it or what they should learn from it. This way they can be proud of themselves and have a sense of accomplishment. They had a thought in their heads and they planned and followed it through. Let's encourage them and inspire them to be and do their best and show their talents and follow their dreams. Let's put the responsibility of their future in their hands and show them the way to achieve it. Let's provide the teachers with all the technology that they need in order to reach every student and their need.