Thing 8

 

http://bighugelabs.com/pocketalbum.php

I found Thing 8 to be time consuming, but at the same time fun.  I got frustrated with the Spell with Flickr.  I played around with it because I liked the different letters.  However, other than copying and pasting one letter at a time, I could not figure out how to take the whole title I made into a new document.  I think the Flickr Memry would be very fun for my kids.  They love being on the computer and they would enjoy playing Memory Games this way.

At Big Huge Labs, I checked out a lot of the image generators.  The one that I played around with the most was the pocket album.  You can see the album I created at the top.  After cutting the paper in the middle you can fold your pictures into a little album.  I made an album of some pictures of my family.  In regards to sharing pictures with your student's families, I have liked Flickr the best.  However, I think the pocket album would be a nice product to actually give your students.  The cutting and folding would be time consuming so you would need to get a parent volunteer to help with this. 

Thing 7

My first thought as I started this assignment was I need something to keep track of all my different account login names and passwords.  I did not have a Yahoo account so now I have another account, plus a new blogger account, bloglines account and Google account.  I think all of the information I have learned so far has been great, but I have account names and passwords written all over the place.  I will eventually save these in my computer, but it's a lot to remember.

In regards to the Flickr account, I like the idea of being able to store my pictures in a safe place in case my computer crashes or something else happens.  I also like that you can title and tag the picture and write descriptions.  What a great way to share pictures with others!  I am wondering if you can add pictures in a faster way.  Adding one picture at a time for the thousands of photos that we already have would be very time consuming.

Thing 6

The picture that I posted is from Flickr.com.  I typed Hawaii into the search box.  I chose this particular photo because I have been thinking about Hawaii.  I have never been, but my husband and I have our 10th anniversary coming up.  I have been searching to plan a trip, but Hawaii is just a dream.  I love the colors in the sky in this picture.  I also love the palm trees and how you can see their reflection in the water.  Just the sight of palm trees is relaxing to me.  Maybe we can go for our 20th anniversary. 

I was unfamiliar with Flickr before watching the video and exploring on the site today.  I like the idea of being able to put your photos on the internet for safe keeping.  I guess I am a private person because I would not share my photos with everyone.  However, I see this as a great way to share photos with family and close friends.  This is also a fantastic way to share photos of field trips and events in your classroom as long as you okay pictures on the internet with your student's parents.

Thing 5

I found RSS easy to use in Bloglines.  I really liked how in Firefox you could add Bloglines right to your favorites and then can very easily add any Blogline that participates in RSS to your Blogline account.  I really liked some of the classroom blogs in Thing 3.  I was happy that I could go back and add some of those blogs to my favorites in my RSS Blogline account.  I do find that I am writing myself a lot of notes to remember how to get back to things, but I'm sure the more I use it I will be able to do it without all the notes.  Now I am excited to go back and click on some more of the links in the classroom blogs and see what I can discover.  I like how I will be notified when the blogs are updated - no more searching for the news.  It can come to me now!

Thing 4

After Thing 3 I was excited to find some blogs that were specifically created for my grade level.  One of my concerns was that if you don't constantly use something you tend to forget about it.  I like that through the use of RSS I will be able to add these blogs into folders and I will be notified when there is new information.  I think using other teachers of the same grade level as a resource is a great way to bring new and exciting things to my classroom.  After starting a blog of my own and learning about how to do the other things in 23 Things I will be able to share with other teachers too.  Not only will RSS help me with my job, I have already added a couple of blogs about books from Bloglines.  I love to read and now I can use the information from book blogs to help me make book selections.  I think my husband new all this information already.  Maybe he didn't share it with me so  we wouldn't both want our home computer at the same time. I can see how easily you could spend a lot of time on the computer with the wealth of information available on the net.  I had know idea the extent of it.

Thing 3

I really liked learning about blogging in the classroom.  I am contemplating if I should start a blog for the remainder of the year for my classroom to get good at it for next year or if I should start fresh in the fall.  I liked the link to other classroom blogs.  I found the blogs at my same grade level the most interesting.  I was surprised to see what kids at a similar age were doing.  I thought the class blogging pages were great.  I liked how many of the teachers linked different websites for students to access at home for additional practice of what was being covered in class.  I also like how some of the teachers had videos and pictures of what was happening in class.  One teacher also had videos of educational songs that they had learned in class.  What a great way for the parents to learn the songs and encourage the kids to sing at home too.  The possibilities are endless for how you could use this at any grade level.

Thing 1 and Thing 2

I am participating in 23 Things for two reasons. The first is to earn CEU's even though I have a long time before my certificate expires. The second reason and most important reason is I see technology advancing and I want to be sure that I am keeping up with it for my personal life and for my life as an educator. I was actually quite surprised to see how far I am falling behind after watching the video in Thing 1. I feel that there are a lot of ways I have been keeping up, but I see I have a lot more to learn. I am glad to see this course being provided by RESA. I am also happy to see that an upcoming inservice in my district will be geared towards different computer programs. It is important for educators to keep up to date so they can be on the same level as their students and prepare them for our changing world.

Technology Class Reflection - Thing 2 Feb. 20th

I just watched the video about blogger.com for the 23 Things Class and I am trying out my first blog post. Let's see how it goes!