Thing 19: More Social Sites

I cannot believe that there are so many social sites out there. Facebook and Twitter were the only ones that I knew of, but know I see that there many more and that some of them can be very helpful, especially when we are out teaching in our profession. I have to say that Teacher Pop was the most interesting one out of all of them.You actually have lots of other upcoming teachers and teachers as well who can help you or you can help them by sharing your ideas  and different instructional strategies. I am just blown away by this social site, I LOVE IT! I also discovered IMDb which is a social site in which people write about different TV shows and movies. Well, that s all for thi post guys, please fell free to leave your comments in the comments section.

Facebook Rocks!

Facebook and Twitter are great social sites that allow individuals to keep in touch regardless of distance through the internet. I currently do not have a Twitter, but I do have a Facebook and I love it. In an educational setting you can keep in touch with parents and students and just the entire community. You can post assignments or important information on this site in which students can check hose messages. The only thing that I do recommend is to have a personal Facebook or Twitter different than the ones in which you have your students and parents on just to avoid misunderstandings. I like the ability to post comments, pictures, videos, and anything I want on Facebook for all friends to see. The main use that I see is to keep in touch and be accessible to students and parents. Also students now days are glued to their Facebook so getting in touch with them if needed and parents just in case that a teacher cannot reach them. Well that is all for this post, please fell free to leave our comments in the comments section.

Thing 17 Delicious Indeed

I think this is a very useful tool. Signing up was very easy, I just did it through Facebook. Just like Diigo it allows you to build your arsenal of website that will help you and that will be there when needed. If you forget the name of a useful site you can always go back and check your Delicious account. Like I said you can really build up quite useful arsenal of tools that will hep you whenever you need a reference or need to refresh on something. I believe it is a very useful site. The best thing about it, is that it is free. Anyone can access it from anywhere as long as they have Internet access. Students can also benefit from this as they can begin to add sites to their Delicious account. Another benefit is that you can see what other people are tagging as well which will allow you to see how good the sites are. Well that is all for this post, please fell free to leave your comments in the section below.

Thing 16

I chose the iGoogle for the start page, because I am more familiar with Google then PageFlakes or Netvibes. It is really cool how you can customize you start page and put all the features that Google offers, for example. I definitely think, that this feature in Google allows you to be more organized and makes life easier by allowing you to put all the different tools used at in one place. I did not set the start page that I created as my home page, because I have Google Chrome and it offers a similar feature to iGoogle.
The Calendar can be a big help, because you can customize it with important events. You can set the Calendar to send you reminders and it allows you to choose from different settings of when to send you the reminders. The advantage to that, is that you can receive those alerts to your email or to your smart phone. With the Google app, you can access it from anywhere.If you are a very disorganized person this will help you big time, especially when trying to remember when projects and tests are due. I think that Remember the Milk is the best one to use, I do think it is a bit too much work, but in the end organization is the Key to success. I really liked the calendar on Google, because It is already on Google and I have an account with them, so why have a bunch of accounts all over the place with many passwords to remember. Well that is all for this post guys, please fell free to leave your comments in the section below.

Thing 15

Wiki is an interesting concept. You can have many people contribute into one place such as in Wikipedia. I tired the school's Wiki and thought it was very easy to use and I could easily contribute to the Wiki.  You could use this method of contribution to allow the entire class participate in it. It can be a real fun activity if the teacher can come up with a creative activity. The best thing about it is that anyone can add to it making it grow such as Wikipedia. In trying the school's Wiki, I found that it was an easy thing to do and had fun reading other peoples post right there in one single place. Well that is all for this post, pease fell free to leave your comments in the comments section.

Thing 14

Here we have the flow chart created on Gliffy and the mind map on bubble.us. I found that creating the flow chart was quite challenging. It was hard t link things together and it was hard trying to come up with a main topic, maybe it is because it is almost the end of the year. I definitely would use this method with my advanced learners and have them create their own flow chart. Another use for this technology would be for myself to teach a concept or just use it as a timeline to go over a quick review with the students. Personally, I really enjoyed doing the mind map. It was less of a challenge trying to do it and anyone could do one, I think it is a fun and interesting method to teach something to students. I think it definitely breaks away from the "traditional" method of PowerPoint notes and something like this can make a complex concept into a simple one. Well that is all for thing 14 guys, I hope this can help some of you in your careers. Please fell free to leave your comments down here in the comments section.

Thing 13

If you like free things that are useful, then you are going to love Zoho Writer and Google Docs. When using Zoho Writer you are allowed to use this web site's version of Microsoft Office Excel, Word and PowerPoint. Did I mention it was free? In times like now is when we really appreciate things that are free. Microsoft Office is more than $100. Some of the features include file sharing, so if a teacher assigned some work they could all easily work on the project from their own computers from the comfort of their home. It also provides online storage for students to save their work with out the hassle of junk drives. What I like the Most is that feature of file sharing, because it just makes it easier for students to work on a project. You can also take a tour and see everything the site offers before you join. I really like this site.

Now, Google Docs is almost the same as Zoho Writer, it also offers an alternative and free option to Microsoft  Office. Google as we all know is a giant, and you can actually do much more, and if you already have an account with Google you can already enjoy these services at no charge and without having to sign up again. Students can also so their work in this website. It is somewhat similar to Microsoft, though Zoho bares more of a resemblance. Just like the templates in Microsoft, Google Docs also offers a variety of templates and features. so which one is better you ask? It really depends on you. I liked both of them, because I am so familiar with Microsoft Office that it really does not make a difference. However, since I already have an account with Google I choose Google Docs. Well that is it for today, please leave your comments in the comments section and hopefully this was helpful!