Thing #23 Summary

YAY!!!! I have finally completed the course! I had a great time going through all the "things" and blogging about my experiences. I have enjoyed blogging so much that I want to keep up my blog and hope that I can find something interesting to blog about! I feel that my favorite discovery would have to be the mashups and third party sites. I love the sites that you can go to to manipulate pictures and images. I love taking pictures and having fun changing them up for example the picture of me as a cartoon or with my new hair and body ;). This program has really opened my eyes to what is out there and what I can do on the web. I want to continue learning about what is out there and how to use that information in the classroom. I never knew that there were sites that you can use just to bookmark your favorite pages! I am def. going to continue using that site. Rollyo is another site that I will take from this experience. It is really cool that you can search several sites at one time. I think that this is a great program and I don't think I would change it at all. It was easy to follow and gave me plenty of resources to use to complete each "thing." I would def. want to participate in another one of these programs. I would like to have more time to complete the program such as at my own pace instead of just a couple of weeks but I would love to learn more about web 2.0. If I could describe my experience in just one word or phrase I would say "eye opening" because it really opened my eyes to what is out there that I didn't know about.

Thing #22 Ning

Ning is a website that lets you create your own social network. It is great that you can meet people and join groups of people that share your interest. With Ning you can learn information and apply it. I found many sites for teachers. Some for teachers in general such as Teach Like a Rock Star and some for specific subjects such as I Teach Social Studies. I am going to join I Teach Social Studies because well I teach social studies and I could use ideas for my classroom. If you don't find anything for you to join make one of your own! You have the ability to create your own social networking site. So get out there and socialize!!!

Thing # 21 Podcasts and videocasts

I have never created a podcast or videocast before. I was excited to get to learn about how to use photostory but I had no idea what to make! I decided to make one of my house remodel. I think these are great for kids because they can make them as part of a project that they are doing in class. To show what they learned or for a science demonstration. I think kids would enjoy making one of these I know I did!

Thing #20 YouTube and TeacherTube

I was so excited when I was found that we were getting to explore YouTube and TeacherTube. I frequently look at YouTube and I am excited that I get to share one of my favorite videos and I am sure many of you are familiar with this video. I first saw it when I went to my mom's house and we were playing on YouTube. She asked me if I saw this video and I was like ummm no I haven't see it and she and I watched this video and I loved it! The funny thing was that that happened on a Saturday and the very next Monday my students came to school talking about that same video! So that is why I have to share it with you. Even if you have seen it, watch it and enjoy it again!
I have never really explored TeacherTube but I have known teachers to use it. When I explored it I found some videos but what I don't like about it is that when you search something they will give you anything with at least one of those words in it and may have nothing to do with what you typed in. I also don't like how it doesn't have an advanced search so when I search for videos I can't limit them to elementary and I am stuck looking through all the videos for h/s and college to get to the few that are elementary. I did find one video that I could use to introduce the solar system. It goes fast so I would have to pause it to go over each of the planets.
The Solar System

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Thing #19 Web 2.0 Awards List

Ok, So I went to the awards list and of course I went straight to the "fun" category. I chose the Hair Mixer and had sooo much fun!!! You not only get to see yourself with new hair but with a new body too! Maybe this will inspire me to lose weight??? But here is the picture that I created:
Many of these could be used in the classroom but I chose to look at one for fun! I like to play around with pictures and enjoyed this one! Here is the site if you would like to make one of your own: http://www.hairmixer.com/ Enjoy :)

Thing #18 online productivity tools

Well....this stuff is pretty cool!!! I tried to download open office and it was taking wayyyyyy toooo long and quite frankly I just don't have the time. Soooo I tried Google Docs. I never knew this existed! It is great for students at school to use on the computers that don't have Microsoft office or for college students that just don't have the money to buy office just yet. I know that I cringed when I bought office 2007 and it wasn't even professional and it cost a buttload. The upside to Google Docs is that it is FREE!!! You can create excel spread sheets, power point and word documents at no cost. The downside is that you don't get many options such as font types and colors and many other tools that you would get with Office. Google Docs is great for simple projects but if you need to create something complex you would def. need Microsoft Office. Check out Google Docs and see for yourself: http://doc.google.com

Thing #17 Rollyo

What a cool tool! This would be great for the classroom because I could build a search engine for the kids that have kid friendly search engines so they could get the experience of finding their own sites with kid friendly information but the teacher still has some control of where they go. Check out my rollyo: Just one click...: http://rollyo.com/ashleyshsu06/just_1_click../

Thing #16 Wiki's

I never knew what a wiki was until I entered this class. I knew what Wikipedia was because I have used it before but I didn't know about creating wiki's. I think that they are really cool and very useful for planning. I think that they would be great for teachers to plan lessons on a wiki, share it with other teachers and they can modify it to make it better and add suggestions. All the teachers would be able to have access to the lesson so that they can use the lesson in the classroom. I also like the idea for literature circles. They would be great to have for each book. The students can read at home and fill out the need info and they an have discussion on the wiki. I find it easy to use and navigate and will def. introduce it to my teammates next year and hope to use it :)

Thing #15 Web 2.0, library 2.0 and the furture of libraries

Library 2.0 is an extension of web 2.0. I read a few of the articles that were given to us and I am not surprised at what they have to say. I think that the library is slowly going from print to computer or digital. For example I have a Kindle. I am able to download books in a digital format at the touch of a button. It makes getting books faster and for some easier to read. More and more students are learning how to search on the web to find information for research and not using reference materials. Libraries need to be ready for this. They need to have available resources for students and adults on the internet and know how to use them. Technology is not going away, it is only going to get more advanced and we need to be prepared for it.

Thing #14 Technorati and how tags work

Technorati is a search engine to help find blogs. It uses tags to help search for specific blogs or you search blog post. When I searched for school library learning 2.0 in post I found nothing. When I searched tags I found some library2play 23 thing post which I thought was cool. When I looked at the most popular I found that most of of them were about pop culture and families. People blog about their personal lives and pop culture. I claimed my blog on technorati and eventually you will be able to find me when you search technorati :) Happy searching!

Thing #13 Tagging and discovering delicious

This is super cool! In the past when I find a website that I enjoy or will use over and over again I book mark it or add it to my tool bar for easy access. Then I learned about delicious! This is something that I will keep using. It is neat that you can network and add other teachers and share bookmarks. Especially if you were all going to use a certain website in class that day. You could post the website and everyone in your network can access it. I joined and it was able to upload all of already bookmarked pages so I didn't have to add them later on! All I had to do was fix the tags. Tags are great to add because when you search a specific topic it finds all the websites with those tags and you don't have to search each website just to find those on your topic, tags does that for you. Here is the link to delicious if you would like to try it out: http://delicious.com

Thing #12 Creating Community Through Commenting

I never really thought about what I commented before. I would put what I felt not really thinking about the impact of the comment or the meaningfulness of it. One important aspect of commenting is writing a meaningful comment. Explain why you like it or don't agree with it. Make it constructive and not hurtful or mean. Another thing that I feel is important is sharing some information about yourself. If you share some information then that opens up doors for comments and you can make new friends. I wouldn't share too much information...too many weirdos! Commenting lets people know that you are interested in what they have to say.

Thing #11 Library Thing

This is a pretty cool website. This website is just like Goodreads which I am already a member of. It does just about the same things that Library Thing does. The widget that I put on my blog I got from Goodreads. To me Library Thing is a little more complex then Goodreads and a little harder to navigate through. I did find a group that I thought would be interesting to join. This group talks all about romance books which happen to be my favorite :) This is great for a librarian. This could help them find books with reviews and talk to other librarians about books to help them decide on what books they could buy for their library. Even though this is a cool website I think that I will continue to use Goodreads.

Thing #10

This image generator stuff is really cool! The first thing that I did was create a cartoon of me. I don't think it looks too much like me but I tried. Here is a cartoon of me:
I also created this really cool mosaic in the shape of a star:
I really think that it is neat that you can create these pictures to enjoy but also you can use them to teach. You could use these in your classroom to help students get more familiar with using the internet and to be creative! If you would like to create a mosaic like I did you can visit:http://www.imagechef.com/ic/word_mosaic/ and if you would like to create a cartoon version of you, you can visit: http://home.mywebface.com/faceApp/

Thing #9 - Useful Library-Related Blogs and News Feeds.

Its one thing to know that you can add blogs and news feeds to your reader but it is another thing to find stuff to subscribe to for your reader! The one that I felt was the easiest to use was Google Blog Search. It was easy to use and and I found what I was looking for. The one that I found the hardest was well all the other ones, lol. But I really did enjoy Google blog search and will use it again. I did find a third grade teachers blog with great ideas that I added to my reader so I can use it next year.

Thing #8 RSS feeds

When someone says what does RSS mean? The first thing that pops into my head is Ross S. Sterling HS in Baytown, lol. I would never come up with what it really means, Really Simple Syndication. I have always heard of feeds but never knew what they were. After watching the video about RSS feeds and reading about it, I find it cool that the info comes to you now and not you hunting it down. I love how you have all this important easy to read info all in one place. I don't have to go to many websites but to one. This would be great for the classroom if I knew of other teacher blogs that I could subscribe to and find great information. For my personal life it is great because I have all the news stations in one place to get the latest news info.

Thing #7- Google Tools

I knew that Google was great at searches but I didn't know that it had all these cool tools! My b/f has g-mail so I knew that it had its own email service but I didn't know that it had these other super cool services. The two that I really liked and explored was the calendar and the web page. We can get a calendar on Microsoft Outlook but what I think makes this one so great is that you can share your calendar with your friends and family so they know what you are up to. I loved the web page because it has all the stuff that I am interested in on one page such as movie info, T.V Guide, weather and YouTube. Here is the link to my web page:http://www.google.com/ig You can see my calendar here:http://www.google.com/calendar/render?utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-ha-na-us-bk&utm_medium=ha&utm_term=google+calendar.