Thing #15 What in the World is a Wiki?

I can see why people use Wiki. This is a great way to talk work together. If you can do it. I set up my own wiki site undre wetpaint. My goal is to have teacher place in ideas on this wiki and as we try them we can up date what works and what does not. There is the chance that the site can be misused. I have set the site so that NO one can edit anonymously. By doing this it should keep the site more reliable. So if you feel like placing your ideas for lessons down so that other can try them and give you feed back. I will be posting my beach ball math.
http://hansoloandcdebaca.wetpaint.com/

Thing #14 Go with the Flow

I signed up for Mind Meister and started to work with it. We have used apps like this in the job that I worked. It is a good way to brainstorm. It just started to scratch the surface of what the site can do. It will be something that I have to spend time with it in order to get better with this app. I also went to Gliffty. I did like this site and spent about an hour with the different charts. My favorite was the SWOT. I would like to use this chart when getting ready for parent teacher conference. This would be a chart that I could give to the parents. It gives them a breakdown of their Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. It would be something that they can look at and discuss with their child. Then I could give them another one at the end of the year.

Thing #13 Web-Based Applications

Well one more thing done. I went to ZOHO which was not bad it just seemed like another word processor. I did like some of the features. The way that it could be corrected on the doc. This is much better than having to work in the pop-up panes. After that I went to Google doc. and played with that for a little while. I liked the translator. I started to work on a rubric for assessment and then changed it over to Japanese. This is a good way produce rubrics for non-English speaking students. The only thing is does it change over correctly to mean the same thing that you intended. I did like Google doc. better then ZOHO, but that may just mean that I need to play/work with it a little bit more to understand it better.

Thing #12 Cool thing for Google

I have spent lots of time on Google but have never use any of the features other then for searching. This class is going to make me go crazy with all the thing that can be done on the Web. I did not want to know this much. It is nice knowing all this stuff. But it sure takes up the time. And because of that I chose to use the Google calender. That is why I was up until midnight I was trying to move all the information from our calender from the kitchen to my new Google calender. I was only able to get through one week. This is a great feature for teacher. If I use it right everything can be posted on my calender and be read by whoever I give access. This way all parents have no excuss not to know what event are coming up for their children. Also parents will be able to schedule time off for field trips, this will be a big help. I am sure there are more thing that I am missing and I will edit my post and put them in.

Thing #11 Finding Good Foods, I mean Feeds

I have been trying the RSS feed tool from the links that were given but I did not like them at all. What I found is that if I go to the corner of my Google Reader and type what I am looking for in the search it will pull up a list of sites I can click on. Now do not get me wrong I do like using Google to search for different thing it is just that for this task the links did not work like I would have hoped. I was able to use Google but I guess that I have use it so much it should be easier. The one I liked the least was Syndic8.com. It made no sence and was to hard to use. I did like Technorat.com I was able to find different thing. I did find the place where they have some videos. In fact the one I found was so cool it was this little girl singing a Lady Gaga song. I put the link at the bottom of the post. It was a little easier to navagate then some of the others. This was not one of my favorites tasks but I will give it some time and try it again. Who knows I may end up liking it later.

http://technorati.com/entertainment/music/article/lady-gaga-prodigy-goes-viral/

Thing #10 Learning About RSS Feeds

Let me start off by saying that I am married and have two boys who just finished basketball and have now started baseball. Time is one thing that I do not have a lot of. It has been hard to try to keep up with all the different posts from the people that I am trying to follow. Sometimes I feel that having to change from blog to blog I lose something. But boy was I happy with this task. I love the way that it will take all of the sites that I like to read and puts them on a page where I can read all of the newest posts. There is a chance that this could get two big. I know that the instruction said to choose five links that was hard. I had to remember that the link that I would follow would send updates all the time. This can be some what overwhelming. One of the best things that it did was it brought all of the blogs that I am following onto my reader page. Now I can keep up with them all. I do not think that I needed to put the names of these link but if anyone what to know what they are I will be glad to let you know.
This will be a neat tool for teaching. One way is that you can have all of your students blog feed to your reader. Second you can have any site that is helpful and gives good advice in dealing with school issues linked. In the classroom if you are dealing with current events you can find information that you could use. As for will I be able to use this as a teacher I will let you know in two years, but personal I am hooked. I have the chance to read just a part of the stroy and if I would like to continue all I have to do is click on the title of the article. Well I hate to go but I must check for updates on my reader.

Thing #9 Online Image Generators

Well I hope that I did this one correct. This was a little bit easier. I know that I will be using this in teaching. I know that some of the students will love seeing some of these cartoons giving them advice. This was something that I will be able to have the student get on and make some of these themselves. There are many fun thing that you can do with these sites. My favorite is the last because I am from Albuquerque.I had to come back to find the linds I forget to put them on my blog. But that is the good thing about a blog is you can edit it at any time. I listed a few things that you can do with these different sites. It is a fun way when you are posting to a blog that you can let parents see massages. Like if a students birthday is coming up you can put the day on a sigh with their favorite cartoon charactor.

http://www.txt2pic.com/celeb/addams-family-lurch.htm
http://www.fansigngenerator.com/make.asp?pic=cartoons/0-willie_coyote_road_runner-06-28-000000-ff0000-660000--topleft-0-200-~24-~40-74-130-188--center
http://www.imagechef.com/ic/make.jsp?tid=Walk+of+Fame
http://www.imagechef.com/ic/make.jsp?tid=Letter+Soup

Thing #8 Flickr mushup

Well this was not as easy as I would have hoped. I thought that I would be able to just go in make some changes and put the picture in the mushup. Well that did not happen. I had to upload some pictures from the storm damage in my neighborhood. this made it easier for me to make my mushup. This was far from being a fun task. I did like some of the other tasks that I was able to do. Like making your name out of different letters. This was not working because I could not get all the letters for my name. Well I just took a few minutes and as you can see I did it. I have my name in the letters. This may turn out to be better then I thought.