Thing #17

After taking a look around Delicious, I think this tool would be great for teachers. I can do research by using the bookmarks and organize them with the tags. I have always used my favorites and it has become very full over the past year. I will be able to go through those sites and tag them on my delicious page now. The potential in classroom rests with the teacher. I don't think I would use this directly with an elementary classroom, but I would however use this to get the latest information and educational updates. This would be a great way to get lesson ideas and keep it all organized.

Thing #16

I started this activity by picking iGoogle for my start page. I went with this one because I am already familiar with other Google features and I have found them to be the easiest to use when compared with similiar products. It was very easy to set this up and I did not know you could do things like this. I will make this my permanent home page since it contains links to areas of interest for me. I use the online calendars the most out of all these tools. I will use them at school when I begin teaching, and I already use them at home. I went into remember the milk to look at the to do lists and while I am a big fan of lists, this was way too much work for me. I would rather use my pen and paper method when it comes to these lists. I would recommend the calendars and the start page tools to others. The 30 days calendar was very easy to set up.

Thing #15

It was really neat to see how you can edit wikis. I have always heard that Wikipedia was not a reliable source of information due to the fact that anyone could edit the content, but I did not really understand what that meant until now. I could use a wiki to get good ideas for lessons and neat facts that you might not find on a traditional website. I think it is very interesting that you can add and change information that is on the internet. Anyone around the world can click on it and read what you added to a site. This makes the world seem closer together.

Thing #14

I picked Gliffy for my flowhchart account. The basic package was free and it includes 5 public documents. This is a great option that allows the user to use the product and then decide if they want to purchase the better package. It was very easy to use and the drop down menus made the process simple. There were several different shapes to use in the flow chart. The site seemed a little slow when I was typing information in, but this could have just been my computer!! I then picked Mindmeister for my mind map. This was the only site listed and I was not familiar with other sites for this activity. This also offered the basic free of charge. I like the fact that it offered a tutorial video at the beginning, and it also had shortcuts information on each page. I browsed the site and found a mind map that mapped out a work of literature. This would be a great way to express ideas that could be used for a formal paper. I will try this feature on my next English essay over poetry.

Thing #13

This tool is awesome!!! I had no idea things like this were available to anyone on the internet. I have been held prisoner by Microsoft Office for too long. The options were easier to use and I was able to customize this document faster and easier than in Word.  I really love the emotions feature. Who doesn't like to plug in facial expressions to their written work. The toolbar was very user friendly and it made this experience even more enjoyable.

Thing #12

One of the tools I used was Google alert. I love tracking earthquakes and now I have this alert set up for me. This was a very easy tool to use. It only took an overview of how to use it, and I had my first alert going in about 3 minutes. It can't get much easier than that! You can see my alert at http://www.google.com/alerts/manage?hl=en&gl=. The other tool I was interested in was the Google calendar. I already use the calendar feature in Microsoft and this tool was very similiar. You can see my calendar at . I can use the calendar to create a monthly calendar for my classroom. I can put all deadlines and important assignments and events on each calendar and send a copy home to parents. I might be able to email the calendar out to parents who wanted to share their email. The Google alert feature would be very useful in the classroom. I could set it up to send me alerts about the events I am teaching about in my science class.

Thing #11

The easiest method of finding feeds for me was through Google Reader. I used this previously to subscribe to several feeds that interested me. All you have to do is enter a search word and all the feeds associated with it will pop up. Just click on subscribe and you got it. Out of the search tools listed on 23 things, I think the easiest search tool was Topix.net. It was very easy to follow and move around in. It was in this site that I found Paula Dean's blog page and a blog page all about Erin, TN. This is where I am from and it is a very little town!!! The most confusing search tool for me was Syndic8. It's home page contained multiple lists and I could not get anything from this site to load correctly on my PC. I soon gave up on this one. The most unusual feed I found was from a blog called Damn Interesting. It is full of articles about tiny bits of information that is very interesting stuff. You would never find this by doing a search for the information itself. I was drawn to a post about the seven abandoned cities and places in Asia. This blog contains information about anything and nothing at all. It was great. I also did a search for keywords on Google and once I found a site that looked interesting I checked to see if it had the feed icon. If it didn't I still got to look at something interesting!