Thing 14

The two sites I looked at were the Gliffy.com and mindmeister.com. I actually liked both sites on Gliffy I looked at the flow charts and on mindmeister the mind map. Both sites were easy to navigate and use, however mindmeister was more interactive and gave more on screen tips as far as how to proceed and create the mind map. It was a bit more user friendly.

I can see myself using both programs in my classroom though, but for different reasons. The flowcharts would be great to use when explaining consequence and rewards to students If they do this then an arrow to what happens. It makes it easy for them to follow it and see what to do. I can see one specifically for classwork If i finish then follow an arrow to what to do next, if I don not finish follow the arrow on instructions to see if its homework or work for later.

The mind map I loved and could see us using it to help with comprehension and expanding on what we are learning that is a great graphoc organizer to use for children to gove them a visual of the material we are using.

Both great tools and will come in handy!

Thing 13

I have never tried to use any of these web based apps before so this was a new concept to me and I was a bit intimidated by the idea of trying something new after having used Microsoft products for 15 years now. I am one that thinks if it isn't broken why fix it.

 I was actually surprised by the Zoho docs site. For the most part the documents, spreadsheets, and the presentations all seemed very similar and just as easy to use as the Microsoft programs. While they may not have all of the same bells and whistles for me and what I use them for they would be sufficient. I also liked that all of your items no matter the type are all together in one easy to navigate folder. You don't have to search you entire computer looking for one thing they are all together in one place.

Going forward this may be a program I will continue to use especially for school. Not having to transfer documents from one computer to another or worrying about where my flash-drive is will eliminate hassle and stress.

Thing 12

Google tools are great! I actually used to work for the Internet company called kgb where people could text in questions and get a text message answer back in return; we used google translate often. We would get questions asking how to say a certain word or phrase in another language and with google translate you could just type it in and get an instant translation of what you were looking for. It works great you can translate to or from lots of languages and it is simple to use!

I am also a sports fan I follow the Minnesota Vikings and Minnesota Twins so I have Google alerts set up so that I can keep track of my teams on a regular basis. It is great for baseball they play so many games and I can't always check the scores so I get an alert about the game. I also love getting alerts about the Vikings to keep up with team news so that I know the latest about trades, or player information.

Thing 11

For me the easiest way to find a blog that pertains to the topic I am interested in is to just Google it or Bing search it. While the other sites that were listed may be great they were kind of foreign to me, so it was easiest to just stick with what I already knew.

Google Blogs was the easiest search tool to use all you have to do is type in the topic you are interested in and then skim through the listings until you find one you are interested in reading further. The Technorati search tool was the most confusing to navigate, they had a lot going on on their main page that were distracting and it made it harder to search for what you were looking for.

Some of the useful bogs that I found pertained to teaching, there are a lot of blogs with great information and ideas in them about things to do in your classroom, decorating tips, activities, management techniques. Other blogs I found interesting are parenting blogs, I have three children each different in their own ways and so it is always easy to do a google search and find a blog that relates to what is going on with them. It is nice to see that there are others out there with the same things going on and to get their perspective on the situation.

Thing 10

I have never heard of the RRS reader program and I think it is a great way to streamline all of the different pages I look at on a daily basis into one accessible place with the most up to date content.  The 5 sites I chose to add to my reader were Fox News, Fox Sports, Entertainment Weekly, The Leaf Chronicle, and Clarksvillenow.com. I love to stay current on my news, worldwide and local, and I am a big sports fan so it will be a great way to get all of the latest information.

This would be a great tool for teachers to use to stay connected to all of the latest teaching sites, they can link the ones they like and have all of the current information right there in one easy to locate place. If they made their page public they could also share all of their favorite sites with fellow teachers and even parents if they are interested.

Thing 9

For this activity I used the ImageChef site to create the above image. I explored some of the other sites but this one seemed the most user friendly. They had lots of different categories of images that you could look through and select from. I saw the above image and added the Learning Zone to the sign I thought that would be a fun image to hang on a classroom door or somewhere in the classroom. This was very easy to create, after you look through the images and select the one you want all you have to do is type your text into the text box. This would be a fun creative activity for kids to do in class if and when it can be tied into a lesson or they could do it during free time, to display in class or take home.

Thing 8

I thought these mashup sites were great!I love that there were som many different effects that you could use to change or enhance the pictures. It gives you so many different choices that you don't normally have to make something unique with your pictures. The site I used for the above picture was the puzzle  site. My kids love to do puzzles at home so I think this would be a really fun site to use at home and in the classroom. It would be fun to take a picture of the class or of individual students and have puzzles made for them to have as an activity in class, or give them to the students at Christmas or the end of the year. It would be a great personalized thing for them to have.

Thing 7

The above is a picture of my three year old Ainsley on our vacation this summer to the beach. I love this picture and chose to upload it to Flickr.

I have not used Flickr before so it was interesting trying to fugure out how to navigate the sight. I like being able to explore and look at other peoples galleries, but as far as using the sight for uploading personal photos for sharing I don't think it is a site I would like to use. Since I started using digital years ago I have actually always used Walmart.com's photo services for storing, sharing, and ordering prints. For me most of the photos I take of our family and children so I do not like having them out there for the public to see and I know you can make it private but I like Walmart because I can pick and choose the people I give access too. That way my family that lives out of state can go look ag pictures and even order prints of them if they choose to.

 I don't think I would use Flickr in the classroom, except maybe to explore pictures that are already available on the site. The one possible thing I could see myself using it for would be to share photos of what is going on in our classroom, like when we have parties or special activities. Those pictures could then be shared on Flickr and parents could go to the site to view them.