Thing Fourteen

I explored Gliffy and Bubbl.us these are both great sites for brainstorming activities and would be fun for students and teachers for class projects. Gliffy has more options for creating different types of flow diagrams. It will also allow you to create and design a room, which I found interesting. Bubbl.us was just mind- mapping and would be great for organizing projects. I liked both sites but Gliffy was my favorite because it had more options to explore and use. I am planning to teacher younger children and do not think that I can incorporate this into my class but will keep it in mind when I do start teaching.  I can see teachers using these sites to organize class events, activities, and fund raising projects.

Thing Thirteen

This is the drawing that I created in Google doc. I can see where student would enjoy creating pictures and writing paper in this program.  There are many cheaper more affordable computer but they usually lack the programing to create documents such as this. Being able to create and use this programs on the web, rather than buying the expensive word programs makes it more affordable and attainable for all students. Students could collaborate on many different group projects, such as science projects by using this online web and each student in a group could contribute their part.
I did my drawing on Google Doc which you can find here: https://docs.google.com/?authuser=0#all for free. Another site that I looked at was Zoho Writer found here: https://writer.zoho.com/home and I did not see much difference between the two site. As usually I just stuck to what I am more familiar with and that is Google.

Thing Twelve

For this activity I chose to set up an email alert for “new on education”. This was extremely easy to do and now I get an email each time something happens that is news worth in the field of education. I can see where this would be useful to all teachers as we need to keep up with the current events taking place in our field on knowledge.

I also like Google translate this would be extremely usefully for ELL (English language learners). It would be a good way for teachers to learn short phrases to communicate with these students in their native language. This would be a good way to welcome them to your class, if you knew in advance that they were being added.  I have enjoyed exploring Google and its many ways to enhance our lives.

Here is a ling to Goggle Translate and Goggle alerts
http://translate.google.com/#
http://www.google.com/alerts

Thing Eleven

To find new blogs to add to my feed, I found http://www.technorati.com/ easy to use. I searched education first here and the results were enormous. This was scary at first so I tried narrowing my search to a more specific topic and the results were not unmanageable. I think with all these sites the more specific you are the better the results you will get. The search program that I was least impressed with was http://www.topix.net/ because this site wants you log in. I would prefer to use a site that does not require me to log in to search it. As a matter of fact, if I went to a site that required me to log in, I just moved on to the next.

I tried to search several sites looking for blogs that use the RSS feed button. One site was not operating; http//www.feedster.com is dead according to other websites, this site has been down for at least two weeks. There are an endless number of ways to find newsfeeds but I am still partial to Google search. It is convenient and easy to use.

Thing Ten

I really like RSS; this feature makes it possible to follow more than one blog without having to visit a bunch of different sites. I find many sites that I run across interesting but I do not have time to sit down and visit them on a regular basis with the newsreader programs that is no longer an issue. These sites are a great way for teacher to keep up with current events, and news that is relevant in their careers. All teachers should be interested in keeping up with latest technology http://www.freetech4teachers.com/ is a great place to do this.

I am going to opt out of the public page on Google reader right now. Maybe I will do it later but right now I just need to focus on my children and school.

Thing Nine

 This sign is honor of my father in-law who lost his battle with skin cancer several years ago. He is greatly missed. This is the link to image chef which is the website I used to create it.  http://www.imagechef.com/.  This site was easy to navigate.  I just pick my colors from a drop down menu and typed my text. I chose to copy the image and save it to my hard drive to make the upload easier because I knew I was going to upload more than one image.

As you can see I used several different image generators on Imagechef.com. The process was the same each time. It has easy to use drop down menu’s and lots of different types of signs to generate. This sign is just my husband's initials with love you inside them.

 

This sign was made using http://www.happyfacegenerator.com/. I clicked on the logo generator and from there it was really easy. I just wrote my text, picked the colors and style using the dropdown menu and clicked preview. Kids would really enjoy seeing their names written in the different styles but as I stated earlier the children I will be working with as a teacher will be a little young for these types of activities. I could see using these for custom sign, alphabet, and numbers for classroom decorations though.

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Thing Eight

I created the picture above using Family Art Studio. This site allows you to create and make art with letters. I can see where kids would enjoy doing such projects, but getting the picture from their site to my blog was not so easy. I tried several different methods before I accomplished the task and I do not think the children I plan on teaching (pre-k to third grade) would be able to do this without assistance. I don’t know if this could be used in my classroom. I can see using it for labels on things in my classroom though.

I really do not like the idea of sharing personal photos on the internet, unless they are for family and friends to view. I feel like it exposes too much of a person’s personal life for the world to take advantage of. It’s unfortunate that we have to worry about how what we put out there will be used against us but the reality is that we do. I am sure I will visit Flickr again in the future when I have more time to play with things like this. Right now between school and my children I don’t have time to truly play with Flickr it’s too time consuming.