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.