Thing # 20

I use Youtube to kill time. I like that I can find videos about almost ANYTHING. If you don't understand how to do something Youtube more than likely has a video of it. The downside about this is that anyone can put any video on the site. I once found a video on Youtube of me doing a dance for my theater class in high school. I didn't even know that the video was online (or that I had been on camera)! For this Thing I typed into Youtube search the word "Funny" and the video I found was short clips of people doing funny things. I hope you enjoy it.

Thing #19

For this Thing I joined Goodreads and TeacherPop. I thought that goodreads was a great way to keep up with books that I have already read and would like to read. It is also a great place to see what other people enjoyed and see how readers rated books. I thought that TeacherPop was confusing and I had trouble finding the links that I needed to navigate around pages. I did see a discussion on TeacherPop that I thought was interesting. I know that in the future I can use TeacherPop to get ideas about internet sites or activities to do in the classroom.

Thing # 18

I already have accounts with both Fackbook and MySpace. I use Facebook almost daily (MySpace not so much). What is great about these sites is that you can use them to communicate with people that you know without having to know their email address. I find people I have not seen in a while all the time on Facebook and it makes it easy to catch up. It puts your friends all in one place and makes it easy to communicate. The down side is that people can read almost anything that you post so you have to be careful about what you say. I think that it is important for educators to understand how social networking sites work so they can use them. It is also important for educators to understand what their students are interested in and this unique way of communication is a big part of some students lives. I think that Facebook or MySpace could be used for the classroom but I wouldn't use it. I think that students have a tendency to forget that what they post on sites like MySpace and Facebook can be seen by more people than they think. I think that when I'm a teacher I won't want to be "friends" with my students on either of these sites because I will want them to have privacy to talk to their friends on there.

Thing # 17

I used the bookmarking sites del.icio.us, Furl, and Ma.gnolia. I thought that Delicious was the best site out of the three I used because it was the easiest. It allows the user to put all of their websites in one place that is easy to access from any computer. By book marking on one of these sites users can go from computer to computer and look up their bookmarks. Another benefit of these sites is that if something happens to a users computer they still have their bookmarks saved to the site & they don't have to go find them again. This also helps users to organize everything into one spot. I think that in the future I will use this website to keep all of my bookmarks easily accessible from any computer. I am currently working towards becoming a special education teacher and I think that this will be helpful to my students. By using a site like this my students can keep all of their websites needed for school and personal use all in one place.

Thing # 16

For a start pages I used iGoogle (I actually already had one) and I love it. It puts the weather, headlines, your mama jokes, and a calender all in the same spot. This is helpful because I usually sit around and watch the news all morning waiting for the weather to come on. On my desktop I actually already have some similar Google Gadgets so its basically like putting all of those onto a web page. I wouldn't make this my homepage because I use apsu.edu as my homepage. The plus side of using online calenders is that you can access them from any computer. Being able to see everything broken down into time slots is also a plus. As far as online calenders go I'm not impressed with any that I have seen. I tried to use the MSN Calender but I didn't really like it (probably because I prefer to have everything hand written.) But who knows, maybe one day I'll learn to like them. I tried to use remember the milk as a to do list, but like the online calenders I would rather hand write these as well. Out of all of the tools that I tried out today I would recommend iGoogle to everyone because you can make it your customized homepage. I will probably use these tools in the future to help me become more organized (and I will certainly use iGoogle again).

Thing # 15

So a wiki is a webstie that allows users to edit and add content to it easily. This means that people (like me) who are not good with computers can go in and add their information or opinion to a wiki. The downside to this is that ANYONE can make changes. This includes people who don't know what they are writing about. The wiki that most people have heard of is probably wikipedia (scary because I know a ton of people who use this religiously & believe everything they read on it). The great thing about using a wiki is that a group can collaborate through it. Using wikis (like wikipedia and others such as book lovers wiki) is great to find general information about a topic. On the apsu23Thingssandbox I added to the Photos and Images section. It was nice to read that other people enjoyed learning about that as much as I did.

Thing # 14

Flow chart or Mind Map?

For the flow chart I used Gliffy. I like it because (like I have said before) it is easy to use. Signing up for it does not take FOREVER! I don't really like to use flow charts or mind maps because I would rather organize ideas differently. Even though I don't like them I did think that Gliffy was easy to use. All I had to do was click and drag. The down side was that I had trouble getting my "bubbles" to be centered and lined up the way I wanted them. For the mind map I used Bubbl.us. I actually liked this a lot because all I had to do was type what I wanted it to say and the website did the rest. This is great because I dont have to spend my time trying to do it myself (and it was lined up)! I think that I will actually use Bubbl.us in the future for assingments. I think that I am definatley a bigger fan of Mind Maps.