Finally

This 23 Things project has given me a lot of insight into the interworkings of the internet and it has provided me with good resources.

However, I am very hard to persuade and I must say that overall I am still not impressed with what the internet has to offer. I think for one that it makes people lazy; which is part of the reason why there are so many rampant health problems. Humans were not designed to sit in front of a computer screen all day.

I know this may seem contradictory, especially with the huge variaty of social media available, but humans are highly social creatures and I feel as if alot of modern technology has made people unsociable. You see it all the time nobody knows how to act towards other people when they are together face to face because they have become so dependent on their games and computers and phones, etc.

Psychologically technology is ruining the human species because it prevents us from properly socializing which goes against the very nature of what it means to be human.

I know I may be the oddball out but I really just do not understand the appeal of maybe about 90 percent of all modern technology but that is just me. I do not mind being the wierd one because I am happier knowing that I have not gotten sucked into the hype that is the internet age. I guess when the world comes crashing down and there comes a day when all of this modern technology is no longer available I will already know how to function without it. :)

Thing Twenty-Three

Find an example or attribution that shows the Learning 2.0-23Things for Teachers blog was based on someone else's work and modified from its original. Now that you know about Creative Commons licensing, how will you use it in the future as a teacher?

Well on the main page of the Learning 2.0-23Things for Teachers blog it says and I quote: "Note: This project is loosely based upon the website 43Things (which allows you to set and track personal goals) and the Stephen Abram article titled 43 Things I (or You) might want to do this year (Information Outlook - Feb 2006)."

I think I will use Creative Commons always, because, students have to know how to appropriatly use material that they find during their research so that way they can avoid getting into serious trouble. Especially, with the internet because the internet has become a way of life to the younger generation but most of that generation does not understand how to properly use the internet and it is up to teachers to help teach them how to use the internet properly.

Thing Twenty-Two

I looked into the livebinders site and played around with it for a little bit but I did not even bother wasting my time making up a binder or anything like that on it. Because, as the website name suggest it is a binder the only difference between a physical binder and the binder on livebinders is that one is physical and one is digital. And to be honest I have always hated binders; like one of the biggest things I always dreaded every school year was hearing the teacher say "You must keep a binder and it will be taken up as a grade."

I don't know why but I can never keep anything straight in my head when using a binder set-up I have tried for many years and have failed miserably; and I am pretty sure if you haven't guessed my resistance to technology thus far it does not make for a good equation.

Binder+Computer=A complete failure. :)

Thing Twenty-One

Animoto

If this were a free site I would totally be all about using it. It was just so simple to use and I literally made this cute 30 second video using pictures of my son and it look me less than five minutes to do it. But, since you have to pay to actually use all the features of the site I will probably never use it again because I can't afford it.

Make a video of your own at Animoto.

Thing Twenty

What did you like or dislike about the site and why did you choose the video that you did? Can you see any features or components of the site that might be interesting if they were applied to your library website?

I love using youtube it is a fast and simple way to access music and videos and the site is so easy to use; just type in what you want to watch or listen to and bam it is there.

The video I choose was a Horrible History video titled "Strange Tudor Laws". Horrible Histories is actual an older British TV show but what I really love about it is that the facts are extremely accurate and that it is super hilarious. They make history relevant to a modern viewer and they make people want to learn.

Thing Nineteen

Are you a member of any online communities?

Are any of these social networks appealing to you?

What did you find that was interesting and that you might use later?

I am a member of a few online communities, as mentioned in the last post I am a member of facebook. Other communities I am a part of is allrecipes it is my number one place to go to for recipe ideas. I am also a member of Wilton it is my number one place to go for all my cake sculpting needs. :)

Out of the social networks that were listed in the 23 things blog that I found appealing was the crafsters.org site. I am way to crafty for my own good and that site actually looked promising and just on the main page I seen a ton of ideas that I would like to try. So I am probably going to check it out more in depth.

Thing Eighteen

Why is it important that educators know how social networking works?

What new insights did you gain about these popular sites?

What did you like or dislike about each of the sites you explored?

Which site had the most useful features?

Can you see a classroom or school application for any of these sites?

I have had a facebook for a long time and I had a myspace before that and I hate social media sites and the ONLY reason why I have one is because I was a military brat and I have lived in other places and social media sites are the most practical way I can keep in touch with friends that live far away; because it allows me to keep them up to date with my life without having to be on the phone all day I can just tell everyone at once. Other than that social media sites do nothing but irritate me. They are always having problems, they make the computer run slow, they are always getting virus, etc., basically they just aggravate me.

As for in relation to educators they are useful for connecting teachers together and it gives a great opportunity to provide an outlet for parents to reach you and it gives your school a chance to promote itself. However, I think all teachers should NEVER add students, at least not until they have graduated and they are ADULTS. And I do not think there is any reason why it should be used in a classroom setting at all.

Thing Seventeen

Social bookmarking, bookmarking in general and tagging are all useful in that it you can catagorize all your information and be able to recall it quicker; or find information quicker by looking up a particular term. I do use tags a little bit, but from what I have found by using tags to look up things is that more often than not I wind up with information totally unrelated to what I need.

For example say I want to look up pictures of Native American tribes, which I do quite frequently because that is my field of study, so I see that someone has tagged say Cherokee 9 times out of 10 the second I click on that tag I am going to be presented with a picture or an article about a jeep. Although I can understand that because the names of the tribe and the jeep are the same. But, it has happened to me hundreds of times where say I click on a tag of "Dog" and get like a cat or something.

Tags are useful but not reliable in my book.

Thing Sixteen

Which start page
did you choose? Why did that one appeal to you? Will you make it your permanent
home page?
How can the online calendars be useful to
you?
What about the to-do lists—helpful, too much
work…?
Did you find a
tool that has some uses for you at the school or at home? Which tool(s) would
you recommend to others?

I have acctually tried the vast majority of these websites in the past; prior to this assignment; and I acctually like alot of them. But, let me tell you I am hopelessly unorganizable, if that's even a word. I think for normal people these sites would be very helpful and that I may even encourporate them into my class because I think it would be benificial for students who spend most of their day on the computer anyway to at least have a to do list or calender of some sort on the computer so that they are more organized. As for me I am still in search for an organizational method that will work for me. :)

Thing Fifteen

How might you use a wiki? What did you find interesting about the wiki
concept?

I do find the concept of wiki's interesting, but I do not think I will ever use them. For starters it has been drilled into my head by virtually every teacher I have ever had DO NOT USE WIKIPEDIA or similiar type sites for information. And teachers say that for good reason. You do not know who is posting what on wiki-based sites and there is no credibility to the information, at all. I do like the idea of a free trade of knowledge but I also like to know that I can rely on that knowledge in a classroom setting.

Thing Fourteen

Describe the tools you chose and why you chose them on your blog.

The first site I looked at was bubbl.us which was pretty cool. I liked the set-up because it was really simple and it didn't have an outrageous ammount of features. I did like that the mind map is a chart that can follow the natural progression of thoughts. And with me being a history major I could find some use for these types of charts as there is a ton of information that I need to keep in order.

The other site I looked at was gliffy which did offer alot of really cool stuff. But, there was to much to try to navigate through and I didn't relaly find it to be very user-friendly. But, they did have a lot of charts that I would be interested in using if I had the time to navigate the site.

Thing Thirteen

Explore the site Zoho and test out the Zoho Writer feature and explore Google Docs. Compare the two web-based productivity sites. Which do you prefer? Why?

Basically, I do not like either. Microsoft Word and Excel can already offer me most of the features that Zoho Writer and Google Docs can. So, why would I want to learn how to use two new sites when I already have a program that I am familiar with. I mean granted Zoho and Google offer more features but if you ask me Microsoft Word and Excel offer to many to begin with.

Thing Twelve

After looking at each of Google tools, choose two of them to explore further. Try setting up an alert, calendar, translate, picasa album or i Google page and using it. If sharing is an option for the tools you choose, make them public. Blog about your experience with both tools and include a link to your creation. Be sure and include possible educational uses.

One of the Google tools that I particularly like and one that I use quite often is Google translate. As a history major, and soon to be history teacher, I deal a lot with primary sources and I have to be able to translate these sources if they are in another language and seeing as how I only speak English I need assistance from a translator.

Google translator is not the greatest but it generally gives a close enough translation to give me the information I need. If Google does not get the translation narrowed down enough to where I can understand the concept of the source I am using then my next step is to go to a translator that was specifically made for the language I need.

Thing Eleven

*Which method of finding feeds did you find easiest to use?
*Which Search tool was the easiest for you?
*Which was more confusing?
*What kind of useful feeds did you find in your travels?
*Or what kind of unusual ones did you find?
*What other tools or ways did you find to locate newsfeeds?

Like I mentioned in my last post I do enjoy using RSS the search tools however not so much. I do not know if it is just the sites themselves or my computer but I tried to use topix.net, syndic8.com and technorati and they all are just cluttered and they froze my computer. I may try to access them again at a later time from a diffrent computer. But, honestly I can just as easily use the regular google search engine to find what I need anyways so why try to incorporate something new in your life when what you have works perfectly fine, right.

Thing Ten

What do you like about RSS and newsreaders?

How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your school or personal life?

How can teachers use RSS or take advantage of this new technology?

To be perfectly honest I do really enjoy RSS and I can actually think of ways in which I could incorporate it into my classroom/

For starters I enjoy it because it is actually very simple to sue and that video: RSS in Plain English, was absolutely amazing. I only had to watch it once and I was like okay I can totally do RSS. Also it helps keep everything in one place. Which, I absolutely hate looking for things, I spend enough of my life looking for my glasses, keys, phone and wallet, that I do not want to waste anymore time searching for things on the computer.

As for class use RSS makes it very simple to make up an account just for your class that your students can have access to with links to resources pertaining to your curriculum. This is one of the few things I have learned about thus far that I will actually use and enjoy using.

Thing Nine

1. Play around with some image generators and find one that you like.

2. Create several different types of images and save them to your computer.

3. Post some of your creations to your blog and describe your process for creating it.

4. In your post, be sure to include ways you might use these image generators in the library, classroom or personally.

I played around with a few of the different generators and I found them quite amusing, although, the only time I could think to use a lot of them is for when I am bored and have nothing better to do than play around on the computer. There were a few different generators that I could find potentially useful in the classroom. One of which being the comic strip generator, but, I probably would avoid using it just because I would use it to make political and historical comics and I would be wary of using it just because there is a fine line that I would not want to cross in those subject areas. :)

The generator I did have some fun with was one of the visiual poetry generators on ImageChef.com. I just made a simple little peace sign that says "peace, love & happiness. I found that this could be useful for students who are very visual; it gives them an easy way to associate pictures with words.

Thing Eight

1.Explore some of the fun Flickr mashups and 3rd party tools that are listed here.

2.Use the mashups to create something, and then upload one or more of your creations to your blog (most will give easy to follow instructions somewhere on the site about how to copy the code needed and where to place it on your blog).

3.In your post, talk about some ways Flickr and/or Flickr mashups could be used in your future classroom or personal life. What are your feelings about sharing photos online?

I checked out most of the mashups that were listed and I decided to use the mosaic maker and just did a basic mashup of a few world flags. And let me tell you. I absolutly hated all of the mashups all of the ones I tried were a pain in the butt to use and I just really can not think of many ways that I can use them in my class at all. As for my personal life I did like the idea of a mashup for some of my personal pictures but again I did not find it worth my time to go through the trouble of useing the sites in the first place.

Thing Seven

Discover an interesting image on flickr that you would like to blog about.

Flickr was pretty interesting. I thought the tags were fairly helpful in narrowing down the searches like for example I searched for "turtle" because I love turtles and I think they are the greatest thing ever. And when the search came up virtually every picture that came up had something to do with a turtle; unlike some other photosharing websites that do not have more specific searches like flickr.

Here is a cute little picture I found of some turtles. I just though it was so adorable; it was posted by a user named mikeleus.

http://flic.kr/p/62FpEc

Thing Six

1. Select and site/tool from the list of Web 2.o web nominees.

2. Explore the site you selected.

3. Create a post about your discovery.

The site I choose to explore was picnic.com.

I absolutely love taking pictures so I decided to explore the site picnic, for those who do not know picnic is a photo editing website. One thing I really loved about this website is that it allowed you to use a sample photo that the site provided to give you a chance to play around with the editing software before you registered to the site. I like that they gave me the opportunity to play around on the site before having to sign up; it allowed me to discover whether or not I enjoyed the site before hand. Another thing I liked is that so much of the editing features are for free unlike other sites that let you do very few things for free.

It is defiantly a site that I would use to play around with my photos when I am bored.

Thing Five

What does school 2.0 mean to you?

What does it mean for schools of the future?

In my opinion I do not believe in the whole school 2.0 hype; while I do think technology and the Internet can serve some good in a classroom I believe that realistically it is more of a hindrance. To begin with there is so much information stored on the Internet and you cannot monitor who is putting what information up so you have absolutely no way of knowing for sure if the information is reliable or not. I do understand most people cite themselves to give what they posted some sort of legitimacy but when it comes down to it people can lie about who they are to try to give what they write credibility; which means in the end you never know who is posting information on the Internet and a lot of times you have no way of knowing if a source is 100 percent accurate.

Secondly if you have your students using the Internet to look up information they don't really read the information most of the time they will google something and then use something like ctr + f to immediately find exactly what they are looking for so they do not actually read the article or document which means they are not learning to retain information.

Third using technology is distracting the attention span of a teenager or child is not very long and when your using the Internet or other technology in school it is extremely easy to become distracted.

Fourth it seems to me, in my opinion, that people of my generation and the generation younger than mine are quite stupid. And I believe that a lot of that has to do with the increasing reliance on technology. We tend to not do anything for ourselves anymore we just have everything handed to us. When using the internet to learn you just type in exactly what you want and you get that. But, when you do that it eliminates the whole process of reading and searching for what you want to learn about there is no trial and error and I believe that is one of the most important aspects of learning.

Fifth my number one biggest issue with technology in the matters of education would have to be handwriting. I believe being able to write, and write well, is extremely important. But, do to the Internet age there is little to no emphasis on handwriting. Alot of schools already have taken cursive writing out of the curriculum which is highly frustrating to me.

My other issue with technology sources does not necessarily go hand in hand with how it is used in schools but I feel like people, especially the younger generations, rely on technology too much. In the event that something catastrophic were to happen and the Internet, cell phones, etc. no longer functioned then most people would not be able to cope without the technology because they are so attached to it. I feel like it is more important for people to go back to their roots and learn how to live life without having a machine live it for you.

So to answer the second question what does this mean for schools of the future I truly believe that the reliance on technology in life as well as in school is going to ruin the education system. But, like I said that is just my opinion. Maybe throughout my journey with the 23 things project I may be persuaded to see the technology side of things which I really hope so because technology and the Internet age is here to stay so I do hope I can see the good in it.

Thing Four

Explain why commenting helps create a sense of interaction and community.

Commenting helps create a sense of interaction and community because it gives the writer of a blog to have feedback and as people begin to interact back and forth through commenting it becomes a conversation. Through comments you can talk and debate just like you would interacting in real life. And as a blog begins to grow and evolve and more and more people begin commenting on the same blog people will begin to look at other blogs of similar interest to their own and form a mini-tech community.

Discuss two other points from the readings about commenting that you found important.

There were 2 points from the Cool Cat Teacher blog titled "How to comment like a king (or queen)" that seemed pretty important for starters when you comment you are showing a blog author that "you hear them". When people blog, generally, they do so because they want their voice to be heard. I mean they would not be posting their thoughts on a public forum if they didn't want to be heard. So for a blogger just knowing that someone out there "hears" them is really what it is all about and the only way to give the blogger the satisfaction of achieving their goal is if people comment.

Another point is that it draws attention to you and your blog. When you comment on some other blog then that blogger, and other blogger's, may take notice of your own blog which in turn gives you more opportunity to get your own voice heard.

Give the name of 7 blogs that you choose to follow (5 from the class + 2 others) and explain why you selected them.

The 5 blogs I choose to follow of fellow classmates are:

1) Tabitha's 23 Things

2) Rkiethblog

3) Chris Earheart

4) BDuncan3040

5) Casey Ball

The 2 blogs I choose to follow that do not relate to the class are:

1) Cherokee Truth

2) Native American Blog

I choose my 5 classmates randomly. I do not know anybody in the class, nor do I know anything about them. So, I had no other methods to go by in selecting blogs to follow. As for the other 2 blogs I choose them based off of my passion. If you are going to know anything about me then know that my passion is Native American history, particularly Tsalagi (Cherokee) history. I am about 1/4 Tsalagi, which is where the passion comes from, and my ultimate goal would be to push Native American history into the school curriculum.

Discuss the comments you made and why you made them.

I have yet to really comment at this point. But, most of my comments I can guarantee will be to agree or disagree with what others are posting in an attempts to spark a little friendly debate. Because, the world is so interesting with a healthy dose of debate.

Thing Three

Ways I Might Use a Blog in my Teacher Education Program or Future Classroom.

Before reading the Edublog post by Anne Davis I would have never thought about using a blog for education purposes. I have always had it in my head that blogs were pointless and used mainly as a social-based media. I had no idea that blogs could be so versatile and thanks to Anne Davis I have discovered that I can use blogging in a very positive way not only for myself as a teacher but for my future students in my classroom.

Some ways that I have discovered to use a blog to my advantage as a teacher is that I can use a blog to communicate with other teachers and get ideas from people whom I would have never otherwise communicated with and I can provide my own tips and tricks that I will learn over time so as to help other future teachers.

As far as using a blog to enrich my classroom I can use a blog to gather and organize information that corresponds to the content I am teaching so my students have a way of accessing good and reliable information.

Thing Two

How did you decide on your posting name and the name on your blog?

It is pretty simple my posting name and the name on my blog is pretty much my last name, my first initial and my class number. I just choose that so the teacher can easily know who I am without me giving out my full name.

What was your experience in creating the blog? Was it easy or hard?

My experience was nothing spectacular I just followed the directions. But, it was pretty easy all of the directions were clear and to the point.

How does your avatar reflect your personality? Does it look like you or someone totally different? Why?

Well my avatar looks pretty much like me. I choose to make it look more like me as opposed to someone else pretty much for the simple fact that I like who I am and I don't need to pretend to be someone else. I don't think that it necessarily reflects my personality just for the simple fact that my peronality would normally be expressed through my clothing chooses and the doppleme website does not give your poor avatars much in the way of clothing choices.

Thing One

The 7 1/2 Habits of Lifelong Learning

All of the habits detailed in the video the 7 1/2 Habits of Lifelong Learning are all very important and I think all should be incorporated in daily life because I believe you cannot live life without constantly being in a state of learning and these habits just incourage you to learn things in a positive manner rather than a negative.

For me personally the easiest habit to master would be habit 2: accepting responsibility for your own learning. I learned along time ago that if I want anything in life it is up to me to achieve my own success and it is up to me to learn and figure out things for my help. It is important to know that you can ask for help but you can't always expect it and you won't always get it. I rely on myself 100 percent of the time, always.

The hardest habit for me to master would probably be habit 6: using technology to your advantage. I do understand that technology can enrich your life and it makes things easier. But, at the same time I have always felt that technology has gotten to the point where it hinders learning because it makes everything to easy. With technology you don't even have to try to do anything and it eliminates the whole process of trial and error which I think is important to the whole learning process. So me and technology do not exactly see eye to eye.