Thing 16

For Thing 16 I decided to do the iGoogle start page with the theme Spring Scape because it was cute. On my start page I have the news, weather, humor comics, and entertainment news selected. I really like the way that everything is set up for iGoogle, but I don't think I will use it very much. At the top of the page it says that iGoogle will not be available after November 1, 2013 therefore I don't want to get attached to this program only to have to give it up after a few months.

Thing 15

Editing the apsu23thingssandbox wasn't that difficult. I uploaded my thing 9 to the sandbox because that is my favorite blog I have done so far :) Wiki is a very interesting concept. Whenever you need to look up something for fun that is usually the first site to click on to get fast information. With that being said it has also been drilled into my head to never use Wiki on a educational work, because of the fact it is not credited and anyone can edit it. Learning that schools now use Wiki is very interesting to me. Since I have now learned this new information I can see both the benefits and downsides to using Wiki in the classroom setting. Since anyone can edit Wiki I have always been hesitant to use this as a reliable source of information, there is so many mistakes that I have seen in Wiki over the years that I have googled things. Editing Wiki can be a good thing though, since sometimes websites only update once a year, the information gets out of date. I think if the teacher properly instructs the students and monitors their students then using Wiki in the classroom for projects should not be an issue.

Thing 14

I decided to compare Gliffy and bubbl.us for Thing 14. I will be honest and say that I went with Gliffy because I did not feel like waiting on a request from flowchart. Gliffy was really easy to use, and I found it to be straight forward. I think that for my students I would choose Gliffy over Bubbl.us, because bubbl.us can be a little confusing if don't play around with it first. with Gliffy it was really easy to make a flowchart. Besides flowcharts you can also make many different types of charts on there as well. I will be honest, I only choose bubbl.us because I thought the name was cute! Like the name sounds bubbl.us deals with bubble charts. You can do tons of different things to the bubble charts like change the color, the font, delete bubbles, edit the text, etc. I think flow charts will be great to use in my classroom to show things like "events leading up to the Civil War", among other events!

Thing 13

I checked out both Zoho and Google docs. When I first signed up for Zoho I was totally confused! It took me a few minutes to figure out how to navigate  the site and figure out all that it could offer me. Once I figured out everything Zoho was a wonderful tool to use in the classroom. It will allow me to make an excel spreadsheet without having excel on my computer....that's something I wished I knew about back in high school! Google docs was very similar to Zoho, but for me it was easier to use because I am used to Google. With Google Docs students could work together on a project in class, or if they didn't have them they could go online and finish the project then send it to each other.











https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1BN9E5RmcaXBFlmVlNz2qrBkDHiAMogfPHZa0p4P5qvI/view-form

Thing 12

The two google tools I decided to explore was google translate and google calendar. I used to use google translate all the time back when I was in French III honors in high school just to make sure I translated the sentences correctly. I think google translate is a really cool program that could be really helpful in the classroom. I remember when I was a senior my theater teacher adopted a girl from Albania, and she only spoke Albanian. Google translate would be a great tool to try to communicate with students like Albana (the girl from Albania) until they learn English. Google calendar is really cool! I am the type of person who wants to be able to stay on top of things, so I put all my things to do in my IPhone calendar or write it down in my schedule. Google calendar even lets you print off your calendar, which I think is really cool.

Thing 11

Searching through the different tools to look for RSS feeds was interesting. http://www.topix.net was horrible in my opinion, from the very moment I clicked on the website I was confused. For me topix was very difficult to figure out how to use. http://technorati.com wasn't that bad compared to topix. I read a few interesting ((but random)) blogs off of technorati...one day when I have more time I will have to go back and explore some more! http://www.google.com/blogsearch was the easiest to use in my opinion. Then again everyone is used to the google layout! I found a lot of interesting blogs on google about history teachers in both middle school and high school! I will use both google and technorati again in the future! As for topix, well I am going to avoid that site like it is the plague!

Thing 10

I really like that RSS and newsfeeders are easy to use! They are a great way to keep up with blogs that are most important to you and you want to read everyday. This is a great way to help cut down on time to find the blog you like and scan through it...it's all where you subscribed to them :). I love this, I didn't know about it before today but I think it is awesome. I subscribed to a bunch of cooking blogs because I love cooking! I think this would be a great tool in the classroom to subscribe to other teachers/parents/principals to help keep up with what is going on in the school. Another way to use this is to have all your students in your class subscribe to each other, that way they are always connected with you and their peers!