Thing #12

For this exercise I decided to explore Google Alerts and Google Translate. Google alerts allows you to type in a keyword or words and whenever these words appear you will get an alert. You also can choose were the word has to appear before you get an alert. For example I put in my hometown in quotation marks and then made it send me an alert whenever my hometown makes it into the news. I think that this could have some educational use if used properly. The main way I think this can be used is to have your students keep up with current events. There are probably more ways that this can be used in the classroom, but this is the only way I can think of.

Google Translate is also a very cool site. It allows you to type in words or sentences and then lets you pick another language to be translated into. This can be very helpful if you are studying a foreign language. It can also be used if you let your students have pen pals in other countries who speak a different language.

I also explored the Google Calendar earlier on in this assignment and I think it can also be extremely helpful. It is a great way to keep up with your schedule and a great way to remind yourself and parents about upcoming events. 

Thing #11

Technorati is a great way to research blogs. This website gives you options of how to research blogs. You can go to the blog directory and pick a topic and continue on from there. You can also go to the search bar to search for blogs or posts; you get to pick which one.  You are also able to look at the top 100 blogs and pick from that list. These are just a few of the way to search for blogs on this website.

You can also go to Google to search for blogs. I do not particularly this way of search blogs. You only have one way to search and it is in my opinion the least helpful and most overwhelming way to look for blogs. The site Topix seems very similar to Google. Neither site is very effective in helping find what you are looking for. Both bring up information based on the keyword, which in some cases it brings up sites that are against what you were looking up just because the keyword you typed was on the page.

The Technorati page was the easiest feed for me to use. I think it was easiest because if one search method was not working for you, you could search for your topic in one of the other methods. I like the method where you can search in a blog directory the best. Both Google and Topix were the search tools that I liked the least. 

Thing #10

Overall I think the RSS and newsreader can be a help when reading updated blogs, but only to a certain extent. Although these readers do help us organize the blogs we wish to read more often and keep up with, I think that once you hit a certain amount of subscriptions it will become overwhelming. Just after subscribing to five blogs the list of unread blogs from these five blogs was extremely overwhelming. Each blog I subscribed to seem to be very interested into blogging frequently, which is not a bad thing unless you are trying to keep up with what they write. Reading one blog a day is understandable, but if each different blog posts multiple things in a certain time period or you do not check it very often it because more of a hassle and you just won't feel like keeping up with it.

This technology can be used in your school to keep up with other teachers or even students' blogs, which is one way teachers can take advantage of this new technology. You can easily see when they have posted new material and read what is written. In my personal life it can be used to keep up with your favorite blogs without having to go to multiple places to see if they had posted anything new yet.

Thing #9

Here are two of the pictures I made from the image generators. For both of these pictures I uploaded a picture from my desktop and then cropped it to fit the background I had chooses. The first picture is of me, my younger sister, and the two little girls I babysit. I used this picture because I thought the two girl that I babysit would enjoy see a picture with them on a television. The second picture is of me and my younger sister. I like this picture of the two of us and thought it would be cool to place in a background. I think that both of these pictured turned out pretty good. Both of these picture were made from the image chef website and found in the background section. The first frame is called starfield frame and the second frame is called television. These generators can be used to create cool backgrounds on some of your photos. In a classroom it could be used for a project, but other than for a project I do not know how it can be used. 

Thing #8

Here are a few of the mashups I did while exploring this website. This website was very cool. I enjoyed looking at some of the ways to play around with pictures. Flickr and Flickr mashup can be used in the classroom to share photos of activities and other things with the parents and other students. Other than that, I do not really see how these things can be used in the classroom. These things are cool to play around with and use in your personal life, but I do not see how they can be used in a classroom apart from what I listed above. These sites can be used to share photos and create cool little extras to go on the original picture of things in your personal life. 

I am all for sharing photos online. I like to look through cool pictures of random things and if possible to look through family photos when they have been placed online. The only bad thing about sharing photos online is that they are out there for everyone to see, so you have to watch and be careful of what type of pictures you place online for everyone to see. 

Thing #7

While exploring through the picture on Flickr, I came across this picture. I thought is was a beautiful picture. It was taken by Chris Marshall who goes by twogiantscoops on flickr, which I guess is his flickr screen name I am not really sure. The URL to this picture is http://www.flickr.com/photos/twogiantscoops/8059010638/. I was able to find this picture by going to the option of explore and then I just looked through some pictures and I really liked this one. When you go to explore you are given different options of how to explore you can look at interesting photos from the last seven days, a map of the world, galleries, and many other different ways. 


After exploring flickr through the explore option, I went to look for pictures with a tag. I started out by doing some random searches just so I could explore some more. Then I decided to look up pictures with the tag sunset in them to see what other sunset type pictures I could find to go with the one I found while exploring. This picture came up on the screen and I thought it was very good picture. This picture was taken by someone with the flickr screen name CubaGallery. I believe his first name is Andrew, but I could not find a last name on the page. The URL for this picture is http://www.flickr.com/photos/cubagallery/7028960641/. 

Overall flickr is a pretty cool website. It is a great way to look up pictures, but I do not think I could of a good way to use it in a classroom. It is not something that I think I will use in my classroom. 

Thing #6

The site that I selected to explore from the Web 2.0 Award nominees was Google Calendar. I liked this site because it showed you a calendar and you are able to add events and things to the calendar. The coolest tool that I found on this website was the option to set a reminder. You are given the option to choose either a Pop-up or email. You then get to choose how much time before the event that you should be reminded. There is a box to type in an exact number and then you choose from a scroll down menu of minutes, hours, days, or weeks. I find this tool to be extremely helpful because if you are like me you easily forget about things, however, with this tool you can set a reminder for the day before and you should be good to go. You also can set more than one reminder, which can help you remember things even better.  Also when you go to set up the event you can also invite people to the event by placing their email address underneath where it says add guest. You are also able to give more options when you send out the invite. I found all of these things at Google Calendar. I think that this can be an extremely helpful website to use.

These website can be extremely helpful at school. It can be used to remind parents of events coming out. You can also invite parents and students to events. Both of these things will be helpful in a school setting. 

Thing #5

In the Atomic Learning Video “What is Web 2.0,” the video discussed the difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. Web 1.0 was considered the read only web, there is not very much to do on these types of websites except read the material. Web 2.0 is considered the read/write web. This type of website can contain blogs, wikis, podcasts, social (student/educational) networking, tagging, and RSS. Since Web 2.0 websites have the capability to contain all of these things the websites are more interactive.

Then Wikipedia goes on to describe in more detail what Web 2.0 means. Wikipedia describes Web 2.0 as “a term coined in 1999 to describe websites that use technology beyond the static pages of earlier web sites.” It also states that Web 2.0 “does not refer to an update to any technical specification, but rather changes in the ways people use the Web.” Wikipedia also allows users to interact and collaborate with each other.

School 2.0 can describe a vision for education in the twenty-first century. I think School 2.0 is the way of describing how things can be used in the future. In a way it can be compared to the difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 according to Wikipedia. School 2.0 is not an update to education it is just the changes that are implemented in the classroom to create a more positive and meaningful environment. School 2.0 is going to help schools become more interactive and hands on in the classrooms. I think it will help the material be learned be more relevant and overall easier to learn for most people based on the way it was taught. 

Thing #4

Commenting is a great way to create a sense of community and interaction. This is done through the communication between those with blogs. As you continue to read blogs and comment on them you gain a sense of who the blogger is. Also as you comment in some cases you can get a discussion going which also add to your interaction with others.

Vicki Davis from the Cool Cat Teacher Blog gave some great advice on her blog “How to comment like a king (or queen!). She gave tons of detail on commenting, but her main points included  “write a meaningful comment, if you have written about it, hyperlink to your post, if you have a blog, share some about yourself when you comment, use a comment tracking service, don’t be afraid to comment, teach commenting, and remember the power of words.” Out of these main point the one that hit home to be was don’t be afraid to comment. I am always nervous about commenting on anyone else’s writing, but from the perspective she gave I will try to make an effort to comment meaningfully on others’ blogs.

Darren Rowse also gave some good advice on how to receive comments. He suggests that you “invite comments, ask questions, be open ended, interact with comments left, set boundaries, be humble, be gracious, be controversial, ‘Reward’ comments, and make it easy to comment.” All of these tips will contribute to a more interactive blog. These are great tips and are really easy to understand.

For the five blogs to comment on I picked Ashley Criswell, Victoria Mars, Marianne Spencer, Danielle Witter, and Wendy Young.  While trying to pick people from our class at first I was just picking random blogs to briefly read through. When I read through Ashley Criswell what she said in her blog seemed to stick with me. Then I read Victoria Mars’s blog and I really like what she said for thing 4. I then went to Marianne Spencer’s blog because she is very vocal in class and seems to be at the same level as I am with technology so I picked her because I thought I could relate. Then I picked Danielle Witter because she sits next to me in class and helps me when I need it and she is very knowledgeable in different areas with technology. The last person I picked was Wendy Young. I picked her because she seems to have a lot to say about some of the blogs and in thing 2; she said she is new to the blogging world so I thought I might be able to relate to here some. For the two blogs not relating to the 23 things, I am having difficulty finding those.

I commented on Nikki and Victoria’s thing 4, because I like what they said and they way they worded it. I commented on Wendy Young’s thing 1 because I could relate to some of what she said. I have not commented on Marianne Spencer or Danielle Witter’s blogs yet, but that is because I am going to comment on some of the later things and I was going to complete my things first so I can relate better to what they say. While scrolling through their blogs, they both seemed to have lots of good things to say.

Thing #3

In a classroom I think that a good way a blog can be used is for communication between teachers. It can help teachers share insights, experiences, ideas, tips, and activities. With the help of a blog these ideas and things can be shared much easier. Teachers can use blogs to help other teachers when the need arises and we can all learn from other teachers’ experiences whether they were good or bad.

A blog can also be used as a class blog. This can help spread the word or remind parents of things that are coming up. You can use it to provide examples of work or activities or just to share some of the students’ work with others. 

Another thing you can do with a blog in the classroom is to let the students create their own blog. This will help most students writing skills improve because they are writing more and they will have to be more conscious of what they say because they know other people can read their posts. This could also be good for discussions and writing assignments.