Thing #23

A simple Google search for learning 2.0 23 things returns 56,100,000 results.  The first few are blogs that seem to be pretty similar in layout and content to the APSU 23 things blog.  Here is a link to one that even displays the Creative Commons icon.  Creative Commons is an incredibly important thing to be familiar with and use in today's constantly and instantly connected world.  In my future classroom I will always be searching for new ideas and I need to be able to determine what I can use or alter from the internet.  Also, if I come up with something awesome and creative, I need to know my rights in sharing it with others.

Thing #19

I joined TeacherPop, and posted the badge to my blog.  I am also a member of Yelp and Urbanspoon, as I do so love to eat and find new places for yummy food!  I suppose social networking would carry over to Facebook, which pretty much the entire world has one of those, and Twitter, which I now have thanks to this blog!  Also, Pinterest is my newest addiction, and my 20+ pinboards hold around 5,000+ pins at this point.  I even have a "Classroom/Teaching Ideas" board, where I pin anything educational and fun!
I think my favorite part of social networking from an educational perspective is the opportunity for collaboration with other educators.  There are always creative and exciting ideas for teaching something, and fresh ideas are always being added, and that is so exciting to me!

Thing #16

Ah, calendars and to-do lists... Now this is my kind of web2.0 tool. I think online calendars would be great not only for keeping myself organized, but also to share with students and parents as a classroom calendar.  No more lost assignment books or excuses about not knowing when the field trip was, because it's all right there.  To-do lists are a bit of contradiction in my world.  I spend time making them, and LOVE to cross things off of them, but they tend to get lost in the shuffle somewhere and forgotten from time to time.  An online list however, that automatically pops up and reminds me of its existence, would be enormously helpful in the follow through aspect of a to-do list.
I've never really been one for personalized start pages.  If we're being completely honest, I do the majority of my internet surfing from my phone or iPad, so it doesn't much matter what my computer's internet home page is now does it?

Thing #15

This Wiki Sandbox thing just seems enormously confusing to me.  It doesn't seem to have any easy way to navigate around, and it also just looks like a running feed of other people's additions to it, rather than any core information.  I couldn't really figure out what I was supposed to be doing, or how to do it.  I think maybe with some more exploring on a different page perhaps it would make more sense, but perhaps not.  I think for my classroom, the students would be too young to understand and navigate a Wiki anyway, so I likely won't be using this tool in the future.

DONE!

This blog made me explore dozens of tools that are available for free on the internet.  Some are very interesting and useful and I will be keeping in mind for the future.  Some were hard to use, inconvenient, or just not very helpful in my opinion.  I think that's really the key to this blog thing-individual opinions.  Just because I thought one tool was awesome or another was useless, doesn't mean my fellow classmates will agree.  Also, it has a lot to do with our perspective majors and what our future classrooms will consist of, from subject matter to age of students.  Overall, these tools are interesting to explore and know about, and I will continue to discover new things that are out there on the wide web.

Thing #20

The bad news:  YouTube is one of those things that literally has thousands of pieces of garbage that must be sorted through to find the one good gem that can be useful. 
The good news:  Those gems are often well worth the hunt, as they can be really great and useful in the classroom.


There are videos out there for nearly every topic within every subject, if you search long enough and look hard enough.  History, science, math, even english (Hello School House Rock!) are all covered in some way, shape, or form.  I already included a YouTube video in my instructional powerpoint that summarized the French and Indian War.  In exploring some more, I found a channel that posts videos that briefly summarize and explain world history and biology. It is geared towards older ages, but is actually very informative in less than 15 minutes a video.   It is suitably called, Crash Course! 
http://www.youtube.com/user/crashcourse

Thing #14

Flow Charts
I checked out Gliffy for flow charts, and was surprised to find that flow charts were only a very small portion of what they offer.  They have several templates for Website Design, Venn Diagrams, Organizational Charts, Network Diagrams, Software Design, Business Process, and even Floor Plans!  I played around with several of these options, and made a few things.  I will likely use this later to make things for my classroom, or even for myself, such as the floor plan tools for my house! I definitely found this to be a great tool.
Here's my bit of playing around with just a blank start and using various tools.

Mind Maps
I chose to explore Mind Meister to make a mind map.  It was pretty handy as far as easily being able to create links to outside websites, create tasks for other users to complete, and insert images.  I also liked that it was easy to collaborate with other users, making it a great tool for group projects.  However, I ran into issues adding new nodes and having what I had typed in a node just disappear when I clicked somewhere else.  The short tutorial doesn't really explain anything about that happening, so I wasn't sure what the issue was, but it happened a few times.  Below is my trial mind map.