One Last Thing.

Well the roller coaster ride is almost over. I do have to say this has been my favorite education so far, even though I spent most of the time wanting to pull my hair out, it is definitely challenging. I think this class provides a lot of great information, but it's almost too much in a condensed time summer course. I know we have all proved that it can be done regardless of being technically challenged, but I'm sure we are all feeling the effects. My favorite part was learning about all the free productivity tools that are available on line. These tools will be very useful in the future. Probably the most surprising thing I learned is Facebook is not as evil as I thought. I'm not sure how well I'll keep up after changing web2.0 tech after this class but hopefully I'll find what I need to know. It would be great if Dr. Wall could link the ever evolving 23 things on to teacher pop to help us less technically savvy people. I have found a lot of great tools and will be using them to keep organized and in touch with current news in my fields of study. I would like to keep my page updated but not sure how well I actually do it. I'll probably at least use my flicker account now that I have it. I don't know what else I would add or change to the class than providing a warning for those who take it during a short semester.

Thing # 4 and you thought I couldn't count

Well now that the other 22 things are down we're back around to # 4. Commenting is needed in an online community so people know they're not just talking to them selves. Another benefit to commenting is you may be able to provide information or encouragement they other wise would not have. The Blogs I commented on were Shannon's because I agreed with her on the amount of time it takes to accomplish some of these task on line. I commented on Mitch's blog on how podcast can be useful even without posting them online. I had to agree with Lori G. on how feed readers were going to make a difference on the amount of junk e-mail I would receive, and I informed Amber where she might find more School House Rock videos. The last class mate I commented to was Brittney on here great idea for using wikis to go global. My blog search led me to Brad Kimberly's Blogging-Iraq page. He was blogging about how Iraqi dirt gets into every thing and I let him know that three years after leaving Iraq I'm still finding dirt in electronics. The last blog I commented on was on The Fat Girl's Guide to Living. I was looking for blogs on recreational kayaking and found their post on larger people and kayaking. The post talked about kayaks with larger cockpits but I noticed they didn't mention sit on top kayak which have plenty of room for any body. I'm part of a large group of kayaking family and friends and this is problem we see a lot of people misinformed on. Hopefully my comments will help someone.

Thing # 23 Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a great site to ensure the material you use is legal and that you set a proper example of media use for students. I plan to use Creative Commons for my media needs on my future assignments. I also plan to have my students use Creative Commons so they can show their legal use of content on projects. I found this attribution at the bottom of the Web 2.0 / 23 things page.

Thing # 22 Podcast

The podcast I listened to for exercise was from the Dave Ramsey, I'm not always able to listen to the show on the radio so it's nice to catch it later. Dave has a lot of great and simple advise on personal finance. and believe excerpts from his show would be great for my class. I added the RSS feed to my reader so I know when the most current shows are posted. I found the podcast through podcast directoy.com which I found pretty easy to use and it provides a lot of topic areas to look through. I believe I will create some of my own podcast later on to help supplement lessons.

Thing # 21 Animoto

One of my favorite Taylor Mali Poems "Labeling Keys"

Thing # 20 Fun with Youtube

Thing # 19 Other social networks

It looks like you can find a social site for just about anything. I did like the teacher librarian Ning when I took a look at it but have not joined. I do not belong to any online communities as of yet other than joining Teacher Pop but I have found a couple that interest me. There is one site I've start to join but membership is pending until I can submit some paperwork. I will probably find some networks for hobbies I enjoy and a couple pertaining to the subjects I intend to teach. I definitely believe these more specialized site have the potential to provide a good source of information on almost any topic.

Thing # 18 Social networks

Well I've joined the evil forces of face book. I 'm having a little difficulty navigating around the site but found getting started really easy. I can see how this could be a good site for tracking down colleagues you haven't communicated with in a while and staying in touch with other teachers, but not really sure how it could be used in a class. I found that it is easy to find people and it appears I have a lot of friends and family that use this site. of course since I'm not a real social person I may be blind to its potential uses.

Thing # 17 Tagging and Social Bookmarking

Delicious has to the potential to be a great tool for teachers who use it. Being able to create a bookmark that can be from any computer and can be tagged to quickly organize information, can make easy to find material for a class you may not have used in while. It also a great advantage to see what other people have tagged the same way and find material you may not have found other wise. I'm a person that uses a lot of bookmarks and I constantly jump from one computer to the next or rebuild my main PC. I usually transfer my bookmarks between computers with a jump drive, but this will make bookmarking so much easier.

Thing # 16 productivity tools

Some of the productivity tools in this exercise were just what I've been looking for. For the start page I had to go with iGoogle. One because I like they page set-up and appearance better than the others, and two it just makes since with all the other Google tools I'm using. You know, One stop shopping. I liked the set-up of Ta da list over the other two so I gave it a try and found it might be useful for keeping list when traveling a lot or a desk top check list in class. My favorite tool is the sticky list down load. I used the post-it programs 30 day trial during the spring semester to keep track of projects on my net book and loved it, but I didn't want to pay the $20 to keep using it. The sticky list works almost the same as the post-it program and best of all, it's free.

Thing # 15 Wiki-wiki-wiki

Looking at the wikies in this exercise gave me some good ideas of how they can be used. One way is having students set up a wiki for working on group project and giving them an easy way to share information and organize their project out of class. Another idea was to use a wiki as away to gather information and stories about a particular place, such as putting together the history of a small town. I found using the wikies easy and will probably use one for setting up future family camping trips.

Thing # 14 Going with the flow

For this exercise I tried out the Mindmeister mind map and the Gliffy flow chart. I did not like the mind map at all, I found it difficult to manipulate and just frustrating to use. The Gliffy flow chart on the other hand was fun and easy. I really like all the image options and how it has image banks by topic as well as the ability to import your own images. I need to draw up network and wiring diagrams sometimes and Gliffy is a great tool for this. It would be very useful for creating time lines or process posters to place on a classroom wall.

Thing # 12 More Google fun

For thing # 12 I played around with I-Google and Google alerts. I-Google is fun since you can set up all the information you want including quick access to G-mail. The news feeds are nice and some of the games are fun as well. I like Google alert because I can have search for web pages and notify me through Google reader. Google alerts would be great for finding the latest information to use in class and you can set the search to a narrower scope than the feed reader.

Thing # 13 Zoho test drive

Thing # 13 is pretty cool. Zoho appears to have a lot of the same features as office and being accessible form anywhere is a big plus. The ability to export files in so many different formats is really nice as well. I don't know that I would be a complete convert from Office, but Zoho could definitely be useful on the road. Well let me wrap up this doc and see if I can post it to the blog.