Thing 16-Library Thing

Library Thing is a great way to catalog and tag your favorite books. It is also a great way to share your opinions about certain books.   I love Nicholas Sparks books so I searched through and found alot of information about his books.  It would be a great way to tag books that you use when teaching certain subjects. It is also a great way to search for other books that people are using to teach in their classrooms.  I would love to read a book and get to discuss my opinions with other people who have read the same book.  I know I did not spend enough time seeing all of the benefits of this site but I plan to go back and look at it more in depth at a later time.  I am adding it to my delicious bookmarks. Here is a link to the Library Thing.

Thing 15 is Delicious

I got signed up for a delicious account. I already have a yahoo account so I used it to sign up for a delicious account. It took me a little while to download the toolbar but once I got it up and running I felt like it was really easy to use.   I searched for websites that will help me with TAKS reading tutoring.   I found many different sites that look like they will be really helpful.  I love the way the delicious bookmarks come up on my toolbar as a separate tab.  I think it will be great to access these bookmarks from home. Several times I have been working on tutoring and get home and forget that I don't have a certain bookmark on my home computer. I am looking forward to having these bookmarks available on any computer.
 I had some trouble coming up with tabs for some websites because they are basically for the same subject. I had to get creative and try to think of other ways to describe the sites.  Once I got in the groove of pushing the tag button and having it just pop up ready for a tag, it got easier. I am looking forward to tagging alot of websites and searching through other teacher's websites instead of always having to go to yahoo and using the search engine for helpful websites.  I think I am going to love it!! Please visit my bookmarks at 
http://www.delicious.com/rondoe2006

Thing 7A

  I subscribe to Rotten Tomatoes on my Google Reader.  I enjoy reading about different movies that have recently come out.  I have been wondering if I really wanted to see "Life as We Know It."  I read on Rotten Tomatoes that it is not worth seeing. I will more than likely wait for it to come out in RedBox and not waste my money to see it in the theater.  It got bad reviews from the critics but decent reviews from the audience.  You can go here to check out the reviews.  I really don't see much educational use for this subscription but I enjoy reading the reviews.

Thing 14-Quizlet

 I chose to play around with Quizlet.  I was really impressed with it and spent a great deal of time playing games that had already been generated. I especially liked the Spanish translation game and the SAT words.  I think Quizlet would be a great way to help students review for upcoming tests.  I also think it would be a great way to enhance their vocabulary.   You can make your own flashcards or play matching games on this site.  The games are timed so it is always fun to play several times to try to beat your score.   The younger grades can use this site to make multiplication flash cards to help the students work on memorizing their multiplication facts.  I really enjoyed searching through this and can think of many uses for this site. 

Thing 13-Image generators

 I really enjoyed playing around with the image generators. I started off uploading a picture of my husband and had some fun putting his picture on a monkey body on the body switcher web site.  Then I made a baseball trading card with my son's picture and then went on sign generator and made a basketball jersey and a license plate for my daughter.  I had a great time playing around with all of these. I bookmarked several of them and will use them to make things for my family.   I think the trading cards would be a great way to teach vocabulary in the classroom.  It would also be a fun way to make memory matching games for students to play.  I use the comic generator to make the monster below.
http://www.comicstripgenerator.com   I think comic generator would be a great way to make and express a thought for the day with your class.

thing 12-Slideshow

Here is the slide show I created. It was easier to create than I thought it would be. I just hope I did all of my credits and links correctly.  Click here to view my slide show. I am crossing my fingers and hoping it works :)

Thing 11-Flickr

I really enjoyed looking at pictures in Flickr. If I was going to use Flickr with my students, I would have pictures saved in a folder on my computer that they could browse through and use.  I came across some photos I would definitely not want my students to look at. I think Flickr is an amazing thing.  It gives you pictures of just about anything right at your fingertips. Previously I have had to search for images and then find the one I want only to find out that I could not use it without paying for it.  I think There are so many ways that you could use Flickr. I think it would be fun to put a picture a day up on the promethian board and have the students use the picture as a writing prompt.   I also think it is a great way to share pictures with friends and family. I have used Snapfish in the past but I am going to start using Flickr now to share my pictures. Here is a picture that I downloaded:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jbj/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/picturesbyann/with/2572062003/

Thing 10-Creative Commons

  I learned a lot from the information on Creative Commons. I am still a little unclear on some aspects of it.  I had noticed the emblem before but did not know what it represented.  I am always concerned about infringing on copyright laws and I always hope that a jury would have compassion on me if I was using the information for my students.  I also worry about it when my own children are using information from the internet. I will show my daughter the creative  commons emblem and tell her to watch for sites that have the emblem.   When I am making a presentation, I usually just use Microsoft clip art or pictures that I have taken myself.  I now feel more comfortable in using other people's materials with the creative commons logo.   I found this portion of the class to be very beneficial.

Thing 9- Whew!!!

 I think I finally finished my wiki.  You can view it here. I called my wiki Ronda's Ramblings.  I enjoyed creating it and felt that it is fairly easy to create (after I printed out the wiki cheat sheet and used it for each step) I even went ahead and created a Voika. I had a really hard time saving it on my wiki. I tried several different ways to get it there and finally got it saved. I am not sure if I could go back and do it again. I just succeeded through trial and error.   I enjoy looking at everyone else's wikis and I am going to go back and add a few more things to mine before it is all said and done.  I am just really excited that now when people start talking about wikis I will actually know what they are talking about. 

Thing 8-Wikis

  I am really learning a lot of new things from this class. I have heard a lot about Wiki's but never took the time to really stop and figure out ways to use them.  I enjoyed looking through the wikis in the discovery lesson.   I was excited to see all of the different uses for the wikis. I looked through a wiki called Kindergarten Counting  where the teacher was trying to make a virtual counting book to 100.  I also glanced through a wiki called Primary Math where students and teachers from all over the world were contributing to ideas about teaching and reinforcing number concepts. There are several classes involved in updating this wiki. I think it would be exciting as a class to add information to this wiki as well and see what the other classes came up with. I think the students would be enjoying creating information for this wiki and not even realize they are learning in the process.  The third wiki I glanced through was a wiki for older students. It was from an eleventh grade class.  The teacher used this wiki to extend topics from the classroom  and offered things like a class calendar, instructions for homework and projects and a place for class discussion.  I think this is a great way to keep the students in touch with what is going on in the classroom. It is also a very good way to keep parents up on what their child needs to be working on at home. 
STRETCH:  All of this information on Wikis made me stop and try to think of a way that I can incorporate a wiki  in my class.  I teach MTA so I think it would be very beneficial to set up a wiki with websites with information on dyslexia as well as a comment board where parents and students can discuss the challenges of being dyslexic and success stories on overcoming dyslexia. 

Thing 7-Comments

 I agree with the writer of "How to Comment like a Queen or King".  It is important to add as much information as possible when leaving a comment on someone's blog.  You should leave a reason for agreeing or disagreeing with their post. I really enjoy reading other people's blogs and I like to leave a positive comment about their blog.  Blogging can be a very positive as well as a negative thing.  I think it is a great way to express your opinion and read about other people's opinions as well. It helps to see how other people feel about issues. I have even been known to change my opinion after reading opinions from both sides of an issue.  I like to read the comments other people leave on my blog as well. I think a blog should be like any normal conversation and I think everyone should follow guidelines for proper etiquette.  I also think that people should use blogging to express their experiences and opinions and not use them to spread gossip.  Right now there is a blog going around at Poteet where several people are blogging about a subject they know nothing about.  It has turned into a very hateful blog about the principal and I think that is a shame.  I think that sometimes people should have to identify themselves if they are going to be blogging about someone else and using their name.  Blogging should not be used to hurt other people. I think our new rule needs to be "if you can't blog something nice about someone then just don't blog it at all".

Thing 5-The Reader (RSS)

 I have spent a lot of time looking through the different websites and reading news on them.  I have never even heard of a reader before this class. It is a great way to keep all of your information at your fingertips. I wish they would have had this available back in the dark ages when I was doing research papers in high school and college. I think this would be very helpful.  I like it because I can find all of the info I am interested in in one click.  It  would be great to use in computer lab because I always struggle to get the kids to type in the URL addresses to find things we are studying. I could have these readers available to them and they would not have to type in all of the information.  I am looking forward to periodically checking my reader to see what other news is available.  I enjoyed looking at the reader for 10 sites for creating digital comics. I like this site because it is designed by an educator and is set up for education so you know there is not going to be any inappropriate material on the site when your students click on them.