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!