Thing 14

Mind Map created in Bubbl.us.

Mind map

Thing 13

Zoho Writer
Google Doc 
Google Doc in Spanish
 

I created a free account with Zoho Writer; and was able to access Google Docs through my gmail account. Zoho Writer and Google Docs both have many great features/tools for creating documents. The Zoho Writer was confusing at first and when I added an image it did not go so well for me. The text and image of my document created with Zoho Writer shifted when it was made available for public view. Google Docs was very user friendly; inserting an image and translating my document were every simple to do. I did not have any format problems with Google Docs when my document was made public. I prefer Google Docs, it is simple to use and I believe it would be great for a beginner. I think Google Docs would be a wonderful application for students to work collaboratively. Work created in Google Docs can be accessed from any computer, without the need of special software. The students working together can edit or leave comments on their work in Google Docs and this may help avoid losing important updates that could be lost from sending work back and forth via email or saving work to a portable devices.  

Thing 12

I google and Google is my internet home page, where I begin all my internet searches. The Google extras can be time and money saving tools for a classroom. The Google alerts, would be great to keep up to date on important and useful topics/information. The alerts are automatic searches for selected terms and are sent via email and that saves time. I was able to get a weekly alert for the key word “education” that consists of news, blogs, and web updates. I can see using Google alerts keep up to date with educational hot topics and/or technology. I think a Google calendar would be a fantastic tool to communication with parents. The calendar can be made public and accessible to whoever needs to receive the calendar. My Google Calendar! I had some difficulties figuring out how to make my calendar public and finding the URL, but I managed to succeed. The calendar can be printed too.

Thing 11

I like the idea of a "circle of the wise." I explored Techorati  and Google Blog Search, and  prefer Techorati Blog Directory; it has the blogs listed by categories, such as entertainment, then subcategories: celeb, film, music, gaming, and books. However, there are still 1,000’s of blogs under each subcategory.  The Edublog Awards was great and contained links to the best educational blogs. Google Blog Search was overwhelming, way too much information, I added more words to the Google search engine to narrow down the blog search,  but 20,000 is a tremendous list of blogs to search through. One useful feed I discovered is The Windows Blog, all about Microsoft Windows, sometime that anyone of any age or profession can find informative. I found and added U.S. Department of Education by a wed search for educational newsfeeds.

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I have both facebook and twitter accounts. I rarely use Twitter and opened an account mainly to see what it is about. I prefer to use Facebook to stay in contact with friends and family. My account has a "friends only" privacy setting so the whole world is not able to see my family and my activity. I feel that it is important for educators to know how social networking works due to its the popularity with of students. Facebook and Twitter are 21^st century modes of communication that seem to be utilizes by everyone. Facebook not only has individual people on this network, but organizations, groups, businesses: schools, Disneyland, The Library of Congress, and Wal-Mart can be found on face book. My only discrepancy with Facebook is that it keeps evolving and sometimes I have to figure out something new, but improvement is a good thing. I think the like/dislike options, Facebook’s subscribe and unsubscribe, are useful. A facebooker can like a “page,” and can “dislike” it if they on long wish to receive updates. I can see a Facebook or Twitter account being useful for a classroom or school use. Social network can be another valuable tool for communication. I found a school’s page were school updates are posted.