Thing 22 for organization

• What are the titles of your binders? 
• Embed one of your binders in your post. Click on the Options button under the binder you have selected to share, and then click on Embed. Copy the code and paste it into your blog post.
• Discuss how you might use LiveBinders in the classroom, including possible lesson ideas for students.

I made three binders as instructed. The first that I made is called College of Education and I have this binder to organize all of the things that I will need while I am still in school. The second is called As a Future Teacher for me to store items that I would like to be able to access when I graduate and get a job. The third is called Resources I would like to share and that is the one I will post here. It is a binder that I want to use for resources I can share with my colleagues, students, and parents. 

This, of course, is only one way that I can use LiveBinder in my classroom. As with most online tools, I can use it to communicate with my students and I can even use it to help my students learn how to organize and give them an easy way to do so.

Thing 21 charts out my years

My Facebook pics

This was definitely fun (and quite easy too). When I signed up for the account, I was able to sign up with Facebook and use my Facebook photos to create the video. This is by far my favorite tool we have learned about.

Watching the Tube with Thing 20

I love that we have started getting into sites that I am familiar with. First Facebook and now YouTube. I love YouTube and I use it for just about everything (except actually posting videos--that really isn't my thing). I look up music on YouTube and instructions and basically anything else I might need to look for. I chose this video because it sums up everything we as teachers need to be aware of in order to teach a number of different students. The wonderful thing is that it sums up everything we have been learning class after class in only one minute and 45 seconds. 

Thing 19 on other social media sites

I have been a member of TeacherPop for awhile but I am yet to really do anything with it. I am not big on social networking in general so it becomes a big out of sight out of mind kind of thing. Regardless, I enjoy facebook and I love the idea of TeacherPop and some of the other social media sites I looked at. I love the idea of having a place specifically for my colleagues and me where I can go to talk to them specifically about teacher stuff that only they would understand. I will probably stick with TeacherPop because it already has a lot of my colleagues as members. 

Visit TeacherPop

Facebook thing 18

My facebook page

The importance of knowing about social media--and more importantly, how to use it--is vital for educators. It is extremely important that educators understand that EVERYONE can see ANYTHING they post on either of these sites: your friends, boss, parents, and students (if you add them) will know when you post a status, picture, or life event. This means that, as educators, we have to be very professional and think before we post anything on facebook or twitter (or any other site for that matter). I prefer facebook over twitter simply because it is easier for me to do things on facebook (probably because I have had an account for so long). I have problems understanding the concept of twitter. With that being said, in my opinion, facebook is the more useful of the two. I can see the potential for school application on these sites. For example, Austin Peay College of Education has a page on facebook that they can post events on for the students in the group to see and stay up to date. Something like that can be used with a classroom as well to communicate between coworkers, students, and their parents. 

Thing 17 bookmarks the web

Delicious reminds me a lot of Diigo.com, which we have been using in class since our class started. I love Diigo and Delicious and the things that they can potentially bring to the classroom. Much like the way that we are using Diigo in class, students from elementary schools to high schools can use Delicious to link popular sites regarding anything from productivity to fun and games to research sites. As future teachers, we are already taking advantage of these sites, by using Diigo to bookmark useful sites for teachers. When we become teachers, we can continue to use these tools to further our educational experience and develop their philosophy.

Thing 16 helps you to organize

For my start page, I chose iGoogle because it was quick and easy to set up. I am not sure if I will make it permanent yet, however, because I am still trying it out. It appears to be a good tool to use to stay organized, and I especially like that it is online so I can access it on any computer I happen to be sitting at in a moment in time. Online calendars are very useful and I have used them for years (although I'm not really consistent enough for them to do any good for me). The to-do lists are much like the calendars except that they require a little less input from me. I like to-do lists and still use them. I personally love sticky notes, so I love apps that use them in effective ways.

Wiki Thing 15

 Once I (finally) figured out how to edit the wiki (simple mistake on my part--oops), it was a pretty awesome experience. On the sandbox, I put in one of my flowcharts from thing 14 and wrote about it. Now that it's there, I can go back to the wiki and look at it, and it blows my mind that it's still there. Overall, I am very happy with the idea of a wiki. In the classroom, I could use a wiki to give my students a place to show creative (or not so creative, if they choose) works that they are proud of to their peers and teachers. It would be an interesting place for me to go and look at how my students' creative minds are developing. 

Flowchart thing 14

I have to say that I had a lot of fun with this tool. After using both tools to make the same flowchart (How to fix your TV), I definitely prefer the mind map because of how creator friendly it is. It took me twice as long to make the flowchart than the mind map but they both looked the same. That being said, should I ever need to make a flow chart of some sorts, I would use the mind map tool on bubbl.us. Here is the flowchart that I created, one from each of the sites that I used.

Mind chart made on bubbl.us

Flow Chart made on Gliffy.com

Looking at the both of them side by side makes me like the Mind Chart as well because it definitely looks prettier. Either would be a good tool to use though.

Thing 13 visits the past to enhance the future

In a high school English class, I was required to use Google Documents for two reasons. The first was to turn in assignments and the second was to have the ability to save documents at school and finish them at home (or vice versa). What started out as a useful tool in the classroom has become an important aspect of many other areas of my life as well. As a leader in after school activities, I was able to distribute information to my subordinates. As a personal writer, I was able to access my stories wherever I was (even after my computer crashed several times). So, I have been sold on online word processing for a very long time. I have no doubt that students could use this tool to collaborate with their peers (because I've done it). Any document that is made in Google Docs can be shared with anyone in a variety of different, easy, ways. They could use this tool to make presentations and send them to other people in the group to be edited (or not because they have the option to make any document they share "read only"), or to have a peer proofread their essays. After using Google Docs and Zoho, I find it hard to find an actual preference based on any of the differences they have (besides the fact that Google Docs has all of my documents already on it). I didn't find many differences that were significant enough to choose one or the other. One thing I do like, however, is that with both online tools, you can do just about anything that can be done with Microsoft Word (I won't say everything because there are many features from Microsoft that I simply do not use and probably many more that I have no clue even exist). To prove this, I used Google Docs to complete a drawing similar to an assignment we recently had to complete in class. In the assignment we had to use Microsoft Word to draw out our ideal classroom. On Google Docs, I drew the layout of a house that I used to live in, and I was quite pleased with the results.

Layout Created in Google Docs

Overall, I am very pleased with this online tool. I will probably stick to using Google Docs, simply because I have already developed it to match my needs but I am so happy to know that it is not the only one out there.