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.