Summary!!!!!!!

Wow what a journey. It was just yesterday when I was sitting at my computer at home going "what did I get myself into?" Well here we are and I did something amazing. I learned 23 and then some things to help me become a better teacher and just more technology savvy. My favorite things were the podcast lesson and how it can come right to you. Google docs and how everyone can have a hand in making a document. And my most favorite was the collage maker. I really like that you can take tons of pictures and make them fun and cool.
By taking this class I really put myself out there to make a change and try to learn more, whether is for professional or just personal. I always told people that I know enough to get in trouble. Now, I think that I know enough to make a difference. I can really take a lot of these things and implement them in the classroom and have my students use more technology.
As far as any changes to the format, I liked it. You were there when I needed you, but you were not looking over my shoulder. You gave advice and comments when I needed them. The many things are self explanatory. If you offered another class like this I would definitely take it. I want to know more. Or if there was a part two to see if we implemented the things in classroom.
I plan to do more searching on my own to keep up with the times. I can use these things in my class with the Google docs and picture maker and hopefully my students will enjoy doing the assignments.

We made it!!!

Thing 23

My Badge

Visit 23 Thingsters


Well as usually I did not know that this stuff existed. I mean I knew it probably did, but I was not searching for it. I really did like the Classroom 2.0 social network. I think that as educators we are in a ever changing field and we need to help one another with ideas to keep students learning and even having fun while doing it. This is a great way to help one another to do this. I have always been told "why invent the wheel, its already been invented?" Now I know that there are teachers out there that wont share and honestly, I do not understand that at all. I am always flattered when someone wants my advice or wants to use one of my ideas. It would be great even if someone could tweak what I have done to make it better. We are in this together, so we should all get on board to help.

Wow I can not believe that we have made it through all of the things. Thank you to everyone for your comments. I hope that we will take it and use to it to benefit the educational process.

Michelle

Thing 22

Finally something that came really easy to me. I actually have a Facebook page. In the past I have used MySpace and I thought that it was way teenagey. I think as educators we need to know how social networking is done, because the students use it. If we understand it, then we can understand how they are technical and use it in our classrooms.
I love Facebook and how you can share information and catch up with people that you haven't seen in a while. I know that I have made connections with people from high school and even people from college. I personally enjoy reading status updates (because I am nosey!!) and looking at pictures that I would not have seen before Facebook. Sometimes if someone says something and people comment it can be a little like a blog. Also, if you are trying to start a business or gain attention for something, then facebook is a good tool to do that.
I think that Facebook has the easier features to use. It is easy to upload photos and add and delete information. I think as humans we need to remember not to put too much information out there. We also need to teach our students to do the same thing. I don't know if I would ever have a use for Facebook in my classroom, but it is fun!!!!!!

Check out Michelle's Page!!!!

Talk to you soon!!!

7b

In my reader this week, I have been following the oil spill in the gulf. I was reading in my BP reader that BP began this weekend replacing the existing lower marine riser package. What does this mean for the gulf? It is basically the containment part of the oil spill. When all is said and done, the total volume of oil collected or flared by the containment systems is approximately 749,100 barrels. In additional information, As of July 10, almost 105,000 claims have been submitted and more than 52,000 payments have been made, totaling almost $165 million. The cost of the response to date amounts to approximately $3.5 billion, including the cost of the spill response, containment, relief well drilling, grants to the Gulf states, claims paid, and federal costs. On June 16, BP announced an agreed package of measures, including the creation of a $20 billion fund to satisfy obligations arising from the oil and gas spill.

With technology being so great, it is hard to believe that they can not completely stop the oil spill. It really just boggles my mind.

There you have it folks!!!

Thing 21

I have always used Google as a search engine. Little did I know it had way more stuff to play with. I really liked the iGoogle. It reminded me of the Yahoo homepage. I liked that I could pick the stuff that I was interested in to put on my page. Even if you are not satisfied, you can go back and change it to what you like. It will even tell me if I have new mail and with one click I can be in my inbox. I also have access to the weather and all of my entertainment news (You know that is my guilty pleasure).

I really like the Google Calendar. It reminds me of the 30boxes website. It is also an online calendar. I like the Google Calendar better, because it seems that everything is tied together. I love how I can use my gmail account to log-in to everything Google. Maybe that could be a new Google thing. LOL!!!

For I side note. I like the Google Lab. It was really cool to see the things that they are trying to come up with. It is crazy how far Google and even the internet has come. You know I loved Google before this lesson, but now I LOVE it even more!!!!!!!!

Have a great one guys!!!!

Thing 20

I have heard of Google Docs, in fact we even had a meeting about them. I did not however grasp the extent of how useful Google Docs can be for me and even my students. There are countless things that you can do with Google Docs. I think that it would benefit my students with typing outlines on Google Docs and then I could grade them on Google Docs. Another thing that I thought about is if I have students working on a group project where they have to type up a script where students have different parts to add, they could collaborate using the docs. I also could monitor their progress in doing this. Another idea that I had, is my students do a mock congress unit. I could have a spreadsheet that the students could look at to see what they need to accomplish. You can do this instead of printing out sheets of paper that the students would lose or misplace. It would almost be like how it worked in this class. Google Docs could help me because I would not be lugging around a ton of papers to and from work. I could just open my computer at home and check my students' work.

And there you have it friends, my take on Google Docs!!!

Michelle

Thing 19

This technology stuff is getting better and better. I found Voicethread really interesting. I even found it amazing that young students were doing things on Voicethread. I loved the voicethread of Library A to Z. I think that was an awesome project that incorporated the students doing research in their school library to learn all of the things that you can do in a library. Then to have the students narrate the book. AMAZING!!!!!!

I think that in my personal life I could use this to post pictures and then hear the comments of family and friends. Fortunately my family all lives close, but if you had relatives that were far away you could hear the expression in their voice about what they thought of the picture.

In my classroom I could put a picture up and have students make comments and actually grade them on their speaking skills. This would be a great tool to help students become more comfortable with speaking. Even if it is not in front of an audience it can still help students with the idea of speaking in front of an audience.

Unitl next time,

Michelle

ps I was going to embed a voicethread in my blog, however when I was doing my assignment, it would not work for me.

Thing 18

YouTube has been around for a while. I always thought that the stuff on YouTube was dumb and people watched it to kill time. Boy was I wrong. Obviously, YouTube is of educational use, hello most of the videos that we have watched in our things are on YouTube (I love the training videos). Now I know there are a lot of funny, weird, and just plain stupid videos, but you can find things that are educational. I found this video Six Rules for Communication.


It was geared towards sales people, but what the guy was saying could apply in any communications class.

On a side note, I can put my daughter in front of YouTube and type in dumb animal tricks and she will be entertained for the longest time.

TeacherTube I do not like at all. It seems that TeacherTube is harder to use for me. I found the videos to be not as educational. Plus the videos took longer to come up and play. I have used TeacherTube before an it is not my favorite at all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well there you have it. Another review by me!!!!!

Thing 17

Podcast, what can I say about you? I will be honest and let you know that I have never used a podcast in my classroom. I know it's so sad. I found this to be very interesting and useful. I had a hard time finding podcast specific to speech communication. However, I found some very good and useful podcast that would work well in my classroom. I love Grammar Girl. It is funny because I was taking a master's class and someone recommended to get her book. I listened to several of her podcast and as an adult it would help me to keep my grammar straight. I think that Grammar Girl could help in any class. I know with my students giving speeches in class they have a hard time with transition words. There was a podcast that would help in using transition words in their speech.

As far a as i tunes goes, I have only used it for music. I just might have to go and play with i tunes and podcast to see what the techy world has for me. There you have my take on podcast friends.

Enjoy!!!

Thing 16

I thought The Library Thing was pretty cool. There are many ways that you could use this in your personal and professional life. I thought in my personal life, I could use this to help me pick out a book of choice. I am not an avid reader (as everyone gasps), but I think that if I searched for something and I could look on The Library Thing and research what people are saying about that book and even after reading the book put my two cents into the conversation. I really liked that it had links to book stores and even public libraries. In your classroom you could have students make their own library of books that they might read during the year. After they read that book, they can add to a discussion or blog of that book.

And there you have my thoughts.

Michelle

Thing 15

I understand the concept of tagging or bookmarking, but it really was not one of my favorite things. I think it is important that you could share websites with co-workers and even if you were doing a research project with your students you could have them get on Delicious and use only those websites for research. In my class we do some research, but it is over many different topics that the students choose.
Now if you were to teach a staff development and wanted the participants to use certain websites or look at certain websites it would help. I do know that I myself bookmark websites that I need or that I like. I really think this could help me just in using my computer at work to my computer at home. If you would like to see my bookmarks here is my link.

Until next time friends!!!!

Thing 7a

As I went back to the reader, I realized that there is so much information that is coming to me on a daily basis. With all of this information, I need to scan and not try and read everything which is what I tend to do. I looked at the Tech Learning and came across something that is very similar to what we are doing in our 23Things. It was The top 10 sites for creating slide shows. There were different ones from the sites that we talked about in Thing 14. I liked Kizoa the best. It just seemed like you could do so much with it. You can make a slide show, store your pictures and share them and add music and effects to it. I really like that people are blogging about such sites to help a technology challenged person like me.

Thing 14

As I continue to explore the what I call the "fun things", I do not want to stop playing with the cool things that are out there. I actually explored several of the websites in Thing 13. The first one that I explored was 30boxes. I really like this website because being a busy person with many hats that I wear I found this one to be helpful in coordinating the many things that I have going on in my life. It can also help to let the important people know when and where they need to be for the next function. I could use this in my classroom to send my students reminders of when things are due.
I also looked at The Mixbook generator. Because I am not creative, I really liked this because you can make a book full of pictures for family and friends. There were different backgrounds to choose from, and you upload your pictures and you can even write a story that goes with it. I think that this one would be great for Christmas presents for grandparents or aunts and uncles. These really are some great tools.

Thing 13

The Collage Maker
This "Thing" was so much fun. I really think that I could sit for hours and just play around with all of the fun stuff there is in the photo fun department.


I think that it is important that students have fun in what they are doing. In my class we do a lot of non verbal projects and this could be one that they might use to put a collage together and explain the nonverbal communication that is going on in each of the pictures. We also, make name plates and we could use the Spell with Flickr website. Those are just two of the ways that I thought of for my classes.

Now I am still playing with them, but these are my rough drafts of what I did with Thing 13.

Until next time friends!!!!

Thing 12

Here is the link to my slide show

Wow!!!!! I did it!!!!! I am so excited to use the slide show again for my personal use. It was so easy!!!! All I had to do was upload the pictures and then waaaaallllllllaaaa!!!! I think my students would really enjoy having a tool like this to do assignments. At the beginning of each semester my students do a cube speech that is all about them. They could do a slide show or a movie instead of making the cube. This thing by far is my favorite. It was so much fun!!!! Now I will admit that I am not sure about the duplicate pictures if I downloaded those twice or if the slide show decided to show them several times. Either way lots of fun. I can not wait for the next thing.

Thank you to Gnuckx for the beautiful pictures from Flickr.

Until next time.

Thing 11

Well as we all know I am still amazed at this world of "stuff" that is out there. First blogs, then wikis, and now pictures. I always can find a way to use pictures in my class. I teach summer school and right now my students are cutting out pictures in magazines and it making a non-verbal book. I look at Flickr and think that this could be a new and improved technology driven assignment. The students can get the pictures off of Flickr or even bring their own to make the book assignment.

I enjoyed looking at the pictures that were on Flickr. There where so many beautiful places and sights to see. I looked up creative commons vacation and and came up with this pretty picture by Gnuckx. It is so beautiful it makes me want to travel more. We know that I can not just up and run away to a far off place. Enjoy the beauty.

Michelle

Thing 6

So apparently I was thinking I was on track but I forgot about thing 6. So I was scanning my reader and came across something really interesting on Cool Cat Teacher Blog. There was this video on the blog about an app called Four Square. I have never heard of it, but it was really neat. While I was watching the video, I was following along with the video and I to downloaded four square. The use of Four Square is so that people know where you have been or where you are going. Say you are going to meet some friends at Starbucks. Well your friend wants to know if you are there so they can look on Four Square to see if they have checked in. It will also help to find a place in your area. It can also show you a map of with directions. In fact you can even post it on Facebook or Twitter where you have checked in. The video said that people networking could use that as their business card because they just have to add that person as a friend and it will show all of their information right in the palm of your hand. The more I learn the more I seem to be amazed.

Talk to you soon!!!
Michelle