Thing #18

With most every student in the world, each have a Facebook or twitter account. So with this comes the point that teachers need to keep up with the latest fad that the students are in touch with. With understanding how the social networking works this could allow the teacher to stay in touch with students on assignments and homework. Each teacher can set up his or her own group for each class, this would allow students to keep up with current events in the classroom as well as with the school in general. There are many advantages with using social networks, one for example would be a parent needing to contact you in the case of homework, if there is a problem that they as parents can't help their child with, they could contact you through Facebook, where you could show examples of the problem. Not all the time will teachers answer their phone or return a phone call, but most of the time, at some point, you will be on your Facebook account during the day or at night. I am not real familiar with Twitter, so I can't compare the two. I enjoy Facebook for the most part. With the good can come the bad, with allowing students to contact a teacher through Facebook, there can and probably in the end have a bad outcome for the teacher. As we all know there can be anything said or posted on these sights, and worst case, someone hack your account and post things to a students wall can end up with the teacher losing their job or maybe even serve jail time. So in my personal opinion, I would never set up a sight that would allow students to contact me directly. If it is not a situation that I can handle inside school, then a parent needs to be present or at least another teacher.

Thing #17

Social bookmarking is a way for people to follow you online.  You might have the best creation or idea in the world, but if you can’t get the public to follow, you haven’t accomplished anything but creating website.

Here are a few things that I have noticed that would help you in establishing a good social network.

Make sure the people understand your knowledge by bookmarking certain sites on an exact topic and developing certain keywords each time you use it. This will let the followers know that you have a understanding of your topic.

Use your site to acquire information from other teachers as well as their ideas. If someone has already gone to the effort of bookmarking it, then the only thing left is to read it.

Share your ideas or information with others out there. Delicious.com has a feature called Stacks. You can stack anything you would like and then share it with your friends, and coworkers, but you can use it for your own personal interest as well.

Thing # 16

     The theme that I chose for my google homepage is Lake Tahoe Colors. I like the outdoors and like being on the water. This scene is relaxing and the thoughts of being out in the warm air is better than being stuck inside where it is cold. As far as making it my permenant homepage, I don't think that I will because as the seasons change, I also change. I don't like looking at the same thing all the time, and change is good. 

     On-line calendars can be very useful. Some of the calendars that I came across would allow you to sync to your phone and keep you updated on upcoming due dates, which I thought would be very useful, then there should nit be a time that someone forgets to do their homework or when the assignment are due. I didn't care for the "to do" list. Seems as if would add more work for a person to do, rather than just adding them to the calendar, then the calendar will notify you by phone.

     The PDFconverter will be a big help to teachers as well as students. There will be times in which a file will be sent that the teacher or student cannot open, and this tool will allow you to open files by converting them to a PDF and viewed on any computer.

Thing #14

Flow Charts vs. Mind Maps
Whats the difference?
At first I could not tell the difference between the two, but there are differences in them. A flow chart is a representation of the direction ideas should travel. A mind map shows certain relationships between different concepts. Below I have a flow chart and a mind map that I created using bubble.us and flowchart.com.

Mind Map

Flow Chart
The best example that I can use to show the idea of a flow chart would be the "Chain of Command" this is used to follow correct order in the Fire Department or emergency services, but you will use it in the education setting as well.

I don't have a certain reason on why I chose flowchart.com or bubble.us. I found all of the sites to be useful in creating different ways to place your ideas. But since I need a reason, I thought these two sites give the most options on styles of templates, shapes and colors.

Thing #13

As I looked through the Zoho writer and Google docs, I enjoyed the Google docs over the Zoho writer. The Google doc website seemed easier to manivure through and I thought there were a lot of additions that I could add to a document. I enjoyed the simplistic ways to draw and the simple ways to add the text box. Just click the text box and enter your text. Before I discovered the Google writers site, adding the text box seemed to be a difficult task, but with this site adding text to a document is easy and can be a great addition to the classroom. This can make designing a document easy for students working in groups with different ideas or a single student with one or multiple ideas. Having students involved in designing their own graphic ideas in their documents means that students will take more pride in their work. The main thing is to keep it simple for the students. The more they have to try and navigate around and find certain ways to put their ideas down the less they are to enjoy their work.

Thing 7

Nothing better than fall fishing. This is what I thought of when I first viewed this picture. Early morning fishing, you can't beat it during the fall, cool, crisp morning air wildlife wandering the s...

 

 

Thing 2

I enjoyed setting up my first blog even thought it has been a headache for me. There were things that I could not get to down load and this got under my skin pretty quick. After you sit down and play with it for awhile you will get the hang of it. I know that I did not post an avitar, but I really did not like any that they had to offer.