Thing #11

I clicked on the link and went to education and found the tool docstoc. I played around and immediately saw a book on 1st grade vocabulary worksheets from Sylvan Learning. I clicked and scrolled down. 


Likes: This tool provides lots of documents that you can look at and search for by topics. You can go to their resources tab and look at free documents, videos, and articles. I stumbled upon a document called the Bloggers Handbook and found that it had lots of information on how to create and learn about blogs. I defined words that we have been learning about like Wiki, RSS feeds, and so on. When I tried downloading I had to register either through email or facebook. 


Dislikes: It was very easy, but the down side is that not everything you may look for is free. You will need to pay to download somethings. This is a tool that I could use as a resource but may not be useful for my first graders. 

Another larger tool I played with was called keepsy. This online photo album creator is very fun and easy to use. I just started to create one called family and put pictures of my family and friends in there. This gave me the idea that I could create one as a birthday present or keep sake. 


Likes: You can invite friends to add pages to your photo album! This a fun way to collaborate and add everyone's photos that they may have. 


Dislikes: Nothing really, only the fact that it can get pricey if you make a lot of albums and order them :(.


Ways I can use this in the classroom: I can create a photo album with all the pictures I take of my kids as a keep sake in the classroom. If parents want to they can order one for their child. Kids can even use this as long as they have an email they can register for free! 

Thing #10

This in Zoho Writer. 

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You can paste pictures from your deskop computer. 

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You can also link websites like zoho.

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I also looked up zoho notebook online and it is very neat!!!  

Ideas:create projects using this tool with my class

-brainstorming story writing

-creating story maps

-plan scripts 

-create and solve math word problems 

Above is the document I created using Zoho Writer. I played around and pasted a picture and a link. Somethings I discovered as I explored this tool is that it is so easy to use! Initially it reminded me very much of google docs. As I searched web 2.0 tools I also found Zoho Notebook which is a great productivity tool that allows you to create multiple contents and share them with others. 

This would be a great tool to show my kids how to use! I think they would get a kick out of seeing that more than one person can work on a document simultaneously and change it. My co-worker requested to our principal that we get our gaggle account activated for first grade and when I went to look up Gaggle I found out that they use Zoho tools! This makes it even easier for my kids to use this! 

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Thing #9

For this exercise I am to add an entry or two to the Technology Poppers Wiki that Dr. Wilson created coming up with a way to integrate technology in the classroom.
This is what I posted:

Kathy: This year I had my students play around with powerpoint and create a presentation on the frog life cycle. Each slide had pictures and text of each life cycle. The kids enjoyed it very much and loved looking at the clip art or going online to choose pictures. In the future I could integrate other tools like LivePresentations that could make presentations more fun for my kids.

Create a post in your blog about the experience:
 It was really neat getting to play around with wikis and see all the interesting postings and ways people can share and communicate with others. I really liked the way everyone could share their ideas about technology on all sorts of topics.

Can you think of ways you could use a wiki either personally or professionally?
Personal: I can use a wiki as a way to chat and share information with friends and family. This can be a good way for everyone to update each other and make plans.
Professional: I can use a wiki to collaborate and plan with the teachers on my team. This would be great for us to make postings on our own time when we can't always meet. We can share all our ideas about lessons.

Thing #8

A wiki allows a group of people to collaboratively develop a Web site with no knowledge of HTML or other markup languages. Anyone can add to or edit pages in a wiki -- it is completely egalitarian. Anyone can create new wiki pages simply by creating a new link with the name of the page. Pages are connected not hierarchically, but by hyperlinks between pages.


After clicking on resources and learning more about what wikis are, I learned that wikis are collaborative and that anyone could put input into one. I use wikipedia a lot so it was interesting to learn more about what it is and how wikis can be used to help libraries and students. 


Here is what I learned from library wikis:
SJCPL Subject Guides - When I opened this wiki I found that it gave the user so much information at your fingertips on how to write a biography or memoir. It teaches you about blogging, which I thought was a great idea! It even gave you tips of how to scrapbook using technology. It definitely is innovative. There are also links on the right that will take you directly to the library's databases to search for books on specific topics. 


Book Lovers Wiki - On this wiki, I found that it was well organized. It has a navigator on the right for you to navigate and find books based on categories and genres. It also give great summaries on books to let the reader know what it is about. It also teaches you how to create a new page in wiki in only two easy steps! I can really see how this wiki is beneficial to students and the libraries. 


Library Success: A best practices wiki- this wiki can help libraries start a wiki page and learn how to become more successful. I would love to share this with our librarian at my school. There is a contents box on the right that outlines and allows you to click on certain information and sections in order to learn about how to successfully make a wiki. 


The Bull Run Library wiki- this wiki reminded me a bit of the Book Lovers Wiki in the way it is organized, but I noticed this wiki has more information about upcoming events happening at the library including summer programs. This is a great way to market the library and let people come. A great idea would be to have announcements on our own school wiki and host more reading programs at our school to get parents and the community involved in helping out students excel in reading. 


Educator Wikis/Teacher Wikis - these wikis were amazing and a great way to get students interested in their classes. There is so much posted on these wikis like homework, discussion, etc. It allows students to also go back and share with others their learning or even ask for help. If I wanted to start something like this I would need all my students and parents to get onboard too and teach them how to use it. I know my students would love the idea that they can still learn from their teacher without being at school. This kind of technology intrigues and excites my students. The younger you start teaching them how to use technology appropriately the more literate they will be in the 21st century. 

My thoughts:I think wikis would help teachers a schools a lot. It allows teachers to be more creative and learn now things as well as making students more engaged in their learning. It helps them take responsibility for their learning. It makes learning life long and not just at school. In the future I would love to start a wiki or perhaps help my school create one to help us collaborate more. My principal at my school has just created a blog for our school during the summer to keep us all connected on things to think about and provide input to her about. I know you cna do some much with technology and it has no limits. 

Thing #7

Here is the wordle I created:

I copy and pasted the URL to my blog and this is what came up! I thought this was neat because it used all the words on my blog to show me what my blog is about. Just by looking I can tell that my blog has pictures, news, and technology information about it. I even played around and copy and pasted one of my first postings on my blog and noticed that the word blogging was used many times and was the main focus of my post. Some questions I asked myself were:

How can this tool be used with your students? Students will have a fun time creating wordle and seeing what it can do with text. I can use this tool as a way for students to type in their short stories and see if they can find out what the main idea is. They can also find stories or biographies of authors to find out the important things about them. I can also foster creativity and ask kids to come up with as many words on a topic we are about to learn to assess prior knowledge and students can all share a discuss what they came up with. Allowing users to change the layouts, font, and colors make this tool even more fun.

I also created my very on Voki named Kathy.

How can this tool be used for students? It can allow students to create more than one Voki to use for classroom activities. It can be a personal one or one that represents a character in a story.  Teachers can assess how well students comprehend stories and the characters in them by having them type in lines and act out plays. It can also help with learning about different topics like oral hygiene. Students can create a Voki to teach us about the importance of oral hygiene. Voki is another neat way for students to communicate and make learning interesting to them.

Thing #6

After clicking on Dr. Wilson's blog to learn how to subscribe to news feeds I did not have any luck viewing the tutorials or resources, but I did subscribe to quite a few news feeds. I tried to post my blogline account here to share it with everyone, but I am not sure if it works. 
bloglines
Here are my subscriptions:
1. USA today
2.urbanspoon
3.my recipies
4. cooking light
5. a poem a day
6. web 2.0 blogs
7. science blogs select
8. investopedia
9. Wall Street Journal
10. google news
11. not invented here
12. unshelved
13. merchant circled

With MyRecipes.com I can read about healthy ways to prepare meals and learn how to make the healthiest low calories meals. I also discovered this website A Poem A day where I subscribed to it because it updates you on writing contests for kids to enter in and gives you great ideas on how to teach poetry. You can even look at student work. I was very impressed with the writing and I think I can really use this for class since I don't know too much about teaching poetry. I gives you great ideas! I learned a lot about RSS feeds and how I can use them more to help me learn about things that interest me.

 Here are some questions that I answered:
What do you like about RSS and newsreaders? It is a great way for you to stay updates with current news and websites that interest you. It is fast and efficient.

How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your work or personal life? I can use it to help my daily life in ways like cooking, saving money, and improving work.

How can libraries use RSS or take advantage of this new technology?
RSS feeds and email alerts can help you find out about new literature in your field to help you find articles for research, books in your field, and update you on current news. Using technology can make it easier for you to find literature that is of interest to you. I feel the most beneficial aspect is that it can allow you to research current topics and keep our libraries updated that way libraries will still be in use for years to come.

Thing #5

As I explored the mashups on flickr I cam upon the first one called mappr that was on Dr. Wilson's blog. I read about this mashup and thought how neat it would be to be able to post all the photos you have ever taken on a map to see all the places you have been to! I love to travel and I am lucky enough to get the chance to travel with my parents when I can. My family loves taking pictures and we joke sometimes saying that my parents have seen the whole world because they take so many pictures. I would love to use this mashup to post all our family pictures that we've taken on trips. I found out that as of 2007, Mappr no longer processes images from flickr, so I looked around more and found a mashup called GeoPanda  that does pretty much the same thing. I could go on there and click on different parts of the map to see photos that are being taken by other people from around the world in real time. Looking at some of the pictures I found one that I liked from Japan. It was a picture of breakfast food and it got me thinking about posting pictures of food because I love taking pictures of food wherever I travel!