Thing #24

Wow, it's the end! Learning about Web 2.0 and the many tools available to educators has been very enlightening! My favorite tools include Animoto, various social networks, GrammarBase, Google Drive, Google Scholar, YouTube, and the PDF and file converter. I can see myself using them in my classroom for actual lessons rather than simply for fun and classroom decor. Not saying lessons can't be fun, but you know what I mean. :) Keeping this blog has made me realize how much technology has taken over the education field. I'm not saying it's a bad thing but we are far beyond blackboards, dry erase boards, and that old school overhead projector machines (remembering the ink getting all over my hand as a lefty I will not miss those!). As far as the sites where students would need their own log-ins such as Edmodo, I hope to keep those at a minimum. Someone I know whose daughter is in middle school has NUMEROUS log-ins for different subjects. I would hope in the future teachers would collaborate and use the same portal where all subjects are in one tight-knit area. Sort of like D2L. ;) Our students are growing up with this technology and it's up to us as educators to stay on top of the latest and continue learning and growing through training and various professional development.

Thing #23

I'm still shocked that I never knew about Creative Commons before this class. I know when I was keeping a blog when I homeschooled, I would do an image search and grab a picture to go with whatever I was talking about. Sometimes I would link back to it and sometimes I wouldn't. I know that's not a good thing. Although in my defense I never claimed a picture to be my own, but I know now that doesn't make any difference. As I'm typing this, something came to mind. A few years ago I took this amazing picture of my daughter face to face (there was glass between them) with a polar bear at the Memphis Zoo. It's precious and one of my favorite things. I was so excited that I threw it up on my homeschool blog. Unfortunately I never thought to copyright it and a year or so ago I saw some random person had it on Pinterest. I know they weren't necessarily claiming it to be their own, because if you see a cute picture on Pinterest you tend to just save it. I reckon I should look into copyrighting it, but I don't know what the statute of limitations is on it or if there is one? Moving on... The one example I saw that the 23 Things was based on someone else's work was the following note at the bottom of the page: Note: This project is loosely based upon the website 43Things (which allows you to set and track personal goals) and the Stephen Abram article titled 43 Things I (or You) might want to do this year (Information Outlook - Feb 2006). The idea itself was based on this website, but it was tweaked enough to be different that it didn't no infringe on anyone's original work or idea. The 23 Things is also similar enough to the 43 Things that a note such was this was necessary.

Thing #22

Secondary ELA

Truth be told I did not care for LiveBinders. Maybe after seeing all the other bookmarking sites and learning about RSS feeds, I don't feel like I have room in my life at this point for another such site. I didn't really care for the layout and it didn't seem the most user friendly. I like the idea of it being a browser within a browser, so you don't have to worry about opening a link under a different tab so on and so forth.

Thing #21

I really enjoyed using Animoto and it was so easy!! What a great tool to use to compact your memories into one entity. I tried making the video on my very old computer that still has Windows XP (Ha!) and that didn't work too well, but it went smooth as silk on a Mac. I used a bunch of pics of my girls from 2011 when we lived in Memphis. Wow! I forgot all about a lot of these! :) I can see myself using this more for personal than teaching, but if I did use it professionally it would be good to put a bunch of pics together from the school year and maybe email it out for students to have. A virtual scrapbook if you will.

Thing #20

Like any red-blooded American, I love YouTube! I am a big stand up comedy fan, so I enjoy watching and listening to my favorite comics.  I also listen to my favorite songs and create playlists without having to purchase music. If I do this on my phone then I most definitely have to make sure I am connected to WiFi, because I have more than once been charged for going over my data. ;)

I've seen firsthand the frustrations teachers can have with YouTube regarding the firewall most school systems have on the computers.  If they are able to access YouTube they have to do their best to bypass the inappropriate ads.  Thank goodness for TeacherTube! Not only is it appropriate for schools (obviously) What personally drives me crazy about YouTube is that is appears that most people are only trying to get their 15 minutes of fame by making a video that can possibly go viral or becoming the next famous pop star (a la Justin Bieber) rather than posting quality videos for the sake of sharing them with the public. Although I am fully appreciative of touching videos posted on YouTube that have gone viral.  This one above is of a woman whose mother is suffering from Alzheimer's and she catches on video a moment when her mother recognizes her.  Try to watch it and not tear up.

Thing #19

As far as other social networking sites, I mentioned in my previous post that I'm also on Instagram. My username is bobbi_jo1015. I like that you can sign up to have it post to other social networking sites at the same time such as Facebook and Twitter. As far as the list on the 23 Things blog, I didn't care for the food sites like Open Source Food and Tasty Kitchen. I belong to enough food and baking blogs as it is. :) For the film sites, I am already a fan of IMDB. I always enjoyed looking up my favorite movies and reading the random trivia. I had also heard of Yelp before, but never checked it going. Click around I rather enjoyed it. You can review different restaurants and businesses on Yahoo which I've done several times, but I like the look of Yelp but better. I signed up immediately (you can find me here ). My boyfriend and I typically don't like to eat at the same place more than once so I could keep up with the different places we come across. :)

Thing #18

I have had Facebook for about five years. Obviously we all consider Facebook a great way to keep in touch with people who live far away and reunite, in a manner of speaking, with those we have lost touch with years ago. I'm able to keep up with relatives I haven't seen since I was a kid and I have stumbled across a couple of childhood friends which has been wonderful. It's a bit of a joke that no one will go to high school reunion anymore because we all have Facebook and we know who got fat. Ha! Thankfully over the past five years I have been smart and I know for a fact that anything I have put on Facebook would not question my integrity as a prospective educator. A couple of teachers I work with have created Facebook pages primarily for their students. It's a great way to post reminders about homework and any links that may be of interest to them. It's also fun to share photos of recent school events where students could also tag themselves if they so desire. As far as simply photo sharing, Instagram is a great one as well since that is a very popular app most people have on their smartphone. I signed up for Twitter several months ago and truth be told I never really got into it. I already had Facebook and, frankly, I wasn't in the mood to keep up with another social media account. My handle on Twitter is @bjcaulfield82, and you will find there's not much there. I thought I would sign up a while back to see what all the fuss is about, and I reckoned it would have been fun to follow various celebrities I'm a fan of. At the end of the day though it just seems to be another social networking sight to keep up with. On occasion it would be a good thing to use if you want to keep followers up to date in real time, and I've see Twitter used just for that. For my future classroom I see myself more using Facebook and Instagram than I would Twitter.

Thing #17

Each internet browser (Firefox, Safari, etc) offers the option to bookmark your favorite websites. That's all well and good, but what about when you're not at your own personal computer? You have no way of accessing your bookmarks. Within the past 3-5 years, some wonderful person out there has come up with the idea of creating sites where you can bookmark your favorite links so you can access them anywhere! Thank you, whoever you are! I enjoyed Delicious. I like to idea of subscribing to tags and having access to all kinds of websites and blog posts pertaining to a tag of interest. I added cooking and running which I believe are similar subjects I used for my account on Feedly. I enjoy food and working out--unfortunately food has been more present since I started grad school. But I digress. Another great bookmarking site for me is Pinterest. Click here to follow me. ;) Unless someone been living underground, everyone should know and love Pinterest. Having different "boards" and "pinning" favorite websites, recipes, and pictures has been a great way for me to keep everything I love all in one spot. Some consider Pinterest a form of social media, so I guess it will also be something I address in thing #18. ;)

Thing #16

I have to point out first of all that I love the PDF converter and file converter! Very cool indeed! With the PDF converter you can read any document sent to you without worrying about not having the appropriate program it originated from. I had a professor who asked us to upload our research papers in PDF format to avoid it opening all crazy in case we used a different version of Microsoft Word to write it. I thought that was a genius idea, and this website makes it even easier so you don't have to go through exporting it and resaving it. I went thought the 5 websites that will make you more productive and mint.com is blowing my mind! I've only put in my bank account so far so I'm anxious to put in everything else regarding my finances. I love the idea of syncing all my accounts and bills into one tidy little area. Part of me kind of doesn't want to know the status of everything. haha I'll be sure to do that completely set up once I get a good few hours to myself. ;)

Thing #15

I knew little to absolutely nothing about wikis before this school year. My daughter's teacher has a wiki for math that she encourages everyone to check often. I admit I haven't been very faithful in doing that. Time does get away from us, but I digress. It's a pretty amazing thing that we all have the ability to make additions to the wiki page. As far as being a form of social media, it seems a lot safer than Facebook or Twitter where people would tend to air all their dirty laundry so to speak. Teacher and parents can discuss the main topic--their students, without worrying about what's going on in each others' personal lives.

Thing #14

I really enjoyed gliffy and bubbl.us. They were both so simple to use and I'm looking forward to using them for the right project during my tenure in the MAT program. The difference between a flow chart and a mind map is that a flow chart goes from one step to another and a mind map is simple a main idea that is expanded into different bubbles. I remember drawing out mind maps in school when brainstorming. That was actually my favorite form of brainstorming. Like Google Drive, I like you can save them on the website and access them from any computer. That seems to be the running theme with all this Web 2.0--everything is more readily accessible since you can simply log onto a website and find all your work right there without having to worry about keeping up with a thumb drive or being at your computer where everything is saved on a hard drive.

Thing #13

I'm already in love with Google Drive! For another class I used it to create a Power Point presentation. It was a group assignment and we were able to give each other access to go in and edit and add slides. We were able to work together without having to carve out a time to meet. We're all so busy with life that being able to edit the file was wonderful! Of course we were also in constant contact with one another to let everyone know what changes and additions were made. You can also take your file and import it to the Microsoft program necessary if you need to attach it or email it. I also know that with Power Point not everything transfers over such as some animations, plus you can't put in sounds. But Google Drive is a great way to get at least started on an assignment requiring a word document or a slide show, and you can log onto it with any web browser.

Thing #12

I have always loved Google Translate. What's great now is you can type and it automatically translates into what ever language of your choice as you're typing. You don't have to wait and press a button to see the translation. No doubt this will massively help me in my ELA classroom when we are reading text with portions in other languages. Students will easily skim over portions of a text in different languages, but that is not acceptable. It obviously must be of some importance or else it would not be there. Both Google Scholar and Google Books have helped me in my research for my paper in another graduate class. I'm writing a research paper on violence against teachers in our country, and many books popped up just by me typing in "teacher violence". If excerpts are available Google will even give me the pages if they happen to contain my search term. I'm able to grab a little bit of research without having to search far and wide for a book and the particular pieces of information that I need. Google Scholar helps with finding periodical journals regarding my research topic--not just for my paper on violence against teachers but for any subject which requires the proper educated viewpoints and research.

Thing #11

I found doing a simple google search for "english teacher rss feeds" seemed to be the simplest route to see what was out there. Technorati seemed the most confusing since there was no option to search for anything, and my impression was that it didn't have anything to do with searching for blogs. To me the title of a blog is what will initially draw me in and one that drew me in was It's Not All Flowers and Sausages, and of course I had to click on it to see what it was all about. It's about a public school teacher who loves her job but has the typical frustrations we all do at our day to day jobs. As I've said before in a previous post, it's just nice that we're not alone. Not all teachers have the cute, decorated classrooms with constantly engaged students and teachers willing to collaborate at a moment's notice. Another good one I found was The English Blog which is just a great blog filled with resources and tips for English teachers. I subscribed to both RSS feeds via feedly so they're all in one place for easy access!

Thing #10

RSS seems like a really handy tool, because in Blogger you can follow various blogs and see which ones have been updated via your dashboard but that's only true for others in Blogger. Just following various blogs via Feedly I like seeing everything I'm interested in all in one spot. I started following some education blogs plus a few blogs on running and baking (yes, I see the irony). I can get fitness tips for when I go to the gym plus that awesome recipe for what to make at the next church potluck all at one stop! Teachers can take advantage of this technology by keeping track of certain posts they want to use by clicking the bookmark icon on Feedly which puts the post under the "Saved for Later" section. We can do this for different posts from different blogs and have them all in the same place rather than having many different browser windows open.

Thing #9

The Happy Face Generator, Image Chef is definitely a blast and much easier to navigate that the other sites. Here's a nice, corny picture I made featuring myself and my boyfriend. That aside, this would be a great tool to use to create personalized notes for students, to help with relationship building. Even something as small as picture with "Happy Birthday (insert name)" will mean a lot.

The Comic Strip Generator was fun as well and great for personilization rather than searching Pinterest for the the school/teacher memes we are growing accustomed to seeing all the time. Here's a little something I whipped up. For all of these it's pretty much as simple as clicking on the picture, typing in your text, and clicking customize. You can either right-click and save your picture or upload it.

Thing #8

I used the Spell with flickr generator. I used it to spell out my daughters' names (Autumn and Hannah). Online generators can definitely be fun since you never know until you click the button what is going to come up. I would definitely use online generators as a way for my classroom decor and since I'll be teaching language arts, I'll definitely incorporate it into my teaching. As far as sharing photos online, I feel pretty okay about it. I've never shared anything that would be considered indecent or question my integrity, but it's weird to think about that any photo I've put out there of myself or my family it's essentially out there forever no matter what I try to do to delete it. All anyone has to do is do a right click and then that photo is in their possession. It's a bit of a double edged sword.

Thing #7

I've seen and heard various references to Flickr, but I have never thought to check it out.  As far as photos go I basically keep them on my phone, post them on Facebook, and that's pretty much that.  I always tell myself that I will go to Walgreens, print off copies, and get back into the scrapbooking game but that has yet to happen.  But I digress.
I didn't type any search keywords into Flickr. I simply clicked on Explore and went to The Weekly Flickr, and I saw this. I thought it was very sweet. Both my daughters love bears, so I thought I would pay a bit of homage to them. Whisper by Flickr

Thing #6

As a future English teacher, I'm drooling on myself a little over GrammarBase.  This goes beyond the grammar and spell check on Microsoft Word.  It tells you if you're being redundant, using passive voice, and just general punctuation mistakes.  Copy and paste a whole text into a box and in a matter of seconds you have words and phrases underlined in different colors depending on the mistake. One thing I do not like about this program is that it does not give you options on how to correct the mistake.  It gives you an offer for their professional proofreader to fix the mistakes for you at the price of $15.45 per page which I personally did not care for. This could be a great teaching tool since it does not give away the answers. A willing student could have his or her assignment put into GrammarBase and as a class go over the mistakes together. Knowing middle school students like I do, they would most likely turn it into a game to see whose assignment would be underlined the least. As long as they're taking in what is being taught that is perfectly fine with me!

Thing #5

      School 2.0 means to me basically what the original blog post said--school as it changes and evolves going into the future and seeing it incorporating technology.  Long gone are the days of blackboards and chalk and pretty soon long gone will be the days of whiteboards and dry erase markers! With smart boards and document cameras there is very little need for such things anymore.  Flipping through the top web tools for classrooms, I did recognize quite a few that are being use for my own children and at the school where I currently work.  I work in middle school and we use Edmodo and Mobey Max.  My children are in elementary school, and I'm seeing a lot of use of Wikispaces. 
     I think School 2.0 means very good things for the future, but educators need to be aware that there can be too much of a good thing.  Educators teaching the same content in the same school system need to come together and decide on a minimum of two tools to use for their students.  Using a new type of program can be a learning process itself before teachers are able to get to the actual content.  Students should not still be struggling to navigate through a program while the teacher has since moved on to teaching the actual material.  Fortunately, students today are very tech savvy but we need to be careful about bombarding them with the requirement to know too many programs. I love the article where Steve Hargadon mentioned that everything is becoming participative. We're "talking" and "communicating" more than ever before without even having to be in person or speaking on the phone. I liked his example using the book industry. If we buy a book from Amazon it can easily suggest 20+ other books we might be interested in based on this one purchase. We will most likely buy another book which we never thought we would. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, since such a thing can lead you down avenues where you otherwise never would have gone.

Thing #4

Commenting helps create a sense of community and interaction by letting the blogger know that what they are saying means something to someone out there and that further discussion is wanted and/or needed.  People who deem a post worthy of taking the time to comment must also be avid followers of said blog.  An interest or lifestyle must be shared, so that's where the initial connection is shared.  Take for example, "mommy blogs".  There is a website called Top Mommy Blogs with "mommy blogs" for every type of mom out there--working moms, single moms, stay at home moms, homeschooling moms, etc--so being a mom is in itself a connection that is easily shared.  Then narrowing that connection down to the type of lifestyle a  makes it even easier to form that community.  Note: As of Sept 19, 2014, I am waiting for the new registered blogs to be posted and then I will go through and post comments on them. But two blogs I have come across that hold some interest to me are The Nerdy Teacher and Learning from My Mistakes. These are both blogs by English teachers, and they talk about real in's and out's of teaching itself. They admit when they've made mistakes in front of students and, to sum it up, just saying that we're all humans and that is what's great about this career. We are influencing students and even more so when they see the human side of us. I simply commented on both these blogs that I appreciate everything that they appear to do for their students and that I feel that I'm not alone since I'm sure throughout my first year of teaching and beyond I will make my fair share of mistakes.

Thing #3

I would use a blog as part of my future classroom and have a direct link on my teacher website (which is generally required of all teachers to post homework, announcements, etc).  Parents might want to know more details of recent happenings in the classroom, amusing anecdotes, or pictures of special events at school.  Of course, being a professional educator this would not be the place to vent my frustrations of the day and of students causing problems.  Anyone with a lick of common sense would know that.  For me personally I would have to be careful since I tend to have a very dry, sarcastic tone and that generally does not carry very well in black and white text.  I think the blog might also be kind of fun for telling about my various adventures during the summer when I don't see students on a daily basis.  Students need to know I'm a real person, too!  Again, this would all be middle school appropriate. 

Thing #2

     I have had two blogs previously.  I had a blog at LiveJournal for about four years where I wrote about my every day life--life as a wife and mother, etc.  I homeschooled my children for a year and a half, and I had a blog solely focused on that.  Recently I commented to someone how much I missed blogging.  As of right now I am a single mom trucking along, raising my two girls, working full-time, and going to school.  I figure someone out there can relate to such a life. ;)

     I decided on the name "Ms. Caulfield's 23 Things" just to make it simple, since this blog is an assignment for class.  Maybe it will become something more once this course is over.  Who knows! The name in the URL (seemscaulfieldlearn) is a bit on the humorous side since I'm sure those around me will see me learn, grow as a perspective educator, and maybe a go a bit insane sometimes.  I reckon having a few moments of insanity is all a part of the learning process.

     Creating the blog for me was an easy experience since I have previous experience with blogger, not to mention Google has made it very simple and accessible for anyone.

     My avatar reflects me fairly well, I think.  Physically it looks like me with the glasses and red hair.  Some folks say I'm blonde, and other say I'm a redhead.  And of course, I am holding a cup of coffee.  Coffee has been my saving grace ever since school started!

Thing #1

I like to think I hold a bit of all the 7 and a half habits of effective learning, but of course some are more challenging than others.  One habit of effective learning that proves to be challenging for me is viewing problems as challenges.  When a major problem, whether in learning or in life, arises I tend to lose my cool a little.  I might outwardly express losing my cool or keep it bottled up, but I've never looked a problem in the face and thought "Challenge accepted!"  I allow myself to have a moment, compose myself, and I do get to a point when I simply press forward.  Problems in life eventually turn out alright in the end, and some can simply take longer than others. 
An effective habit of learning that comes easy to me is keeping the end in mind.  Once this program is done I will have my master's degree and eventually have a teaching position--I might even start teaching before the program is over! My boyfriend hit the nail right on the head when he said I was building rather than tearing down.  Each class I go to, each assignment I complete and submit, and each time an educational theory gets implanted into my brain I am building toward the future.  I will walk across that stage and receive my degree and find a fulfilling career.