On the edge of thing 17

Okay, in all honesty, Delicious is very overwhelming to me.  I can completely understand it's incredible usefulness and how it can connect educators throughout the world, but it is intense when you first pull up a search.  The results for "educational technology" were enormous!  Over 77,000!!  That's a lot to process.  Once I have my own classroom, I can see the benefit of being connected to so many resources and other teachers and having all that at my fingertips to help me be a better teacher, and to provide the best experience for my students possible.  I do look forward to exploring Delicious further when I can really get into it and use it for my own "kids".

No. 17-1=16

This is my google home screen.  I love the water and especially when there's a dock that leads me out to it, like my own personal peninsula!  I can see how having a customized start page is helpful because I can load it with all the things I want to see first thing in the morning like news, sports, stocks, etc.  This tool is a very cool thing, and I can absolutely see how this would be great using in the classroom because the class could collectively have a home page and place on it all the things the students need to know about current events or even sports teams to follow for the sake of stats and mathematical situations.

Okay, I am officially sold and a big fan of MSN calendar!!  I logged in and added an event, and then looked at the calendar on my phone for my hotmail account and there was the event!! I could totally get into using this tool because with age comes a certain level of forgetfulness and if I can be reminded of the events in my life everywhere I look? Well, then that's a very good thing.

I absolutely love Remember the Milk!!!  I even got the app for my phone just to keep my you-know-what straight!  As a teacher I can completely see how important this tool/app can be because there is so much to keep track of and so many things I want to do, and I know I hate when I forget to do things. 

So to summarize thing 16, I love my Google homepage, my MSN calendar and Remember the Milk.  I can see how using all three of things tools/apps will help keep my world productive and my you-know-what straight.



My journey into a Flowchart Nightmare (aka Thing 14)

Okay, this was a horrible experience.  So many buttons, colors, boxes and THEN after I create this poor excuse for a Design Chart, I'm told I joined a collaboration!  Seriously?  So at this point I'm laughing, but I will grudgingly admit, this is a pretty cool program once I settled down and started exploring I could absolutely see the benefits this would have in a classroom environment.  I tried to copy and paste my chart, but alas to no avail, but this link should take you there should you want to see my Flowbee.

http://flowchart.com/editor/#e655656e21a9e451:101889

The Wacky World of Wikis (aka Thing 15)

Well, first off, what the heck?  This was not a thrill a minute, BUT I can see how it's very cool and would make an awesome class project.  I did not accept that challenge at this time, only because this class and math, I am on a slight overload of information.  I will though, create one at a later time when this part of my academic adventure is complete.

The sandbox activity was interesting, but I had trouble navigating, hence the post of absolutely nothing, but then I was able to get a picture up there.  Here's to hopin' it's correct!

Lucky 13

                                   
This is my attempt at google docs drawing.  It was not wonderfully user friendly and navigating it was not my favorite thing to do.  I was going for the punch effect in the old Adam West/Burt Ward Batman episodes.  The choices of fonts is not that great, so I think it's missing the true BAM impact.

My zoho experience...

 

Okay, so with both programs I can see the benefits, especially if students do not have computer access at home, but they use a library computer or a friend's in order to access these programs and do their work.  That's a very cool feature of both.  To me Zoho offers a little more in terms of creativity and it is more user friendly.  I would probably push for my students to use Zoho before google docs.  However, having only poked around these programs for a short time, in all fairness I would have to take more time to really get to know them.

Annnnnnnnd onto number 12!

I found google alerts to be very cool, and I even set one up just to test it out and right after I set it up I did get an alert, so obviously it works.  I just want to be very choosy about what alerts I do set up so my phone isn't blowing up. Then I did get in to google calendar and that also was easy to use and inputting dates and events was a breeze which was great.  I have used Picasa web albums in a previous class and loved it.  It seems like google apps are for the most part user friendly and make you want to keep using them or at least find out more about them.

As far as education, I can see how alerts would be fun because a class could keep up with current events in real time, and also a teacher could appear to be a genius by knowing the latest about whatever her classroom by receiving updates on subject which interest his or her students.

http://www.google.com/alerts/manage

I set up on alert for the St. Louis Rams because my husband loves the Rams, and I like to know what he's talking about when he updates me on what they're doing and who they're drafting and so on.  I like them too, and am trying to up my knowledge of them and football in general.  After 20 years of marriage, I figured it's about time.

https://www.google.com/calendar/render?pli=1

I set up a calendar and put a couple things on it in March just to get my feet wet in it.  It's pretty cool, but there are so many way to keep track of my schedule that I just don't know if I want to deal with another one.  This was pretty cool though, and I could see how having everything concentrated onto one calendar would be pretty nice especially when it seems like there is always something happening.

Thing No. 11

*Which method of finding feeds did you find easiest to use?

For where I am at right now in my technology journey, I liked google the best because I could just type in a word or phrase and it searched for me. 

*Which Search tool was the easiest for you?

Google blog search because it was a very simple search page.  I didn't like the busyness of the topix and technorati pages.

*Which was more confusing?

Okay, I think I answered this in the previous question, but here we go again, topix and technorati were the most confusing.

*What kind of useful feeds did you find in your travels?

I found sever on emerging writers and great ones on Special Education law and literacy.  I'm looking forwarding to receiving updates from these feeds because information to those subjects is always changing.

*Or what kind of unusual ones did you find?

I really didn't poke around enough to notice anything unusual.  I will need to take more time and really look, because I have no doubt the way the world is today there are those out there posting and blogging about things that would probably leave me wondering, "What the heck is going on in this world?"

*What other tools or ways did you find to locate newsfeeds?

Most websites that provide information give searchers the opportunity to subscribe to what they have to say.  So I have seen newsfeeds on various websites.