Thing # 17

del.icio.us is an easy tool to set up and to use. I learned about it and played with it during my staff development on social bookmarking. I definitely use this now and enjoy having my favorite websites available to me anywhere. It helps me to remember sites I have visited and want to return to. I can definitely see teachers and students using this tool for research and in the computer lab or on the laptops. I said before, that it helps out a lot when you have a room full of second graders who all need help getting to a certain website for a lesson. It increases productivity time and reduces headaches, lol. Libraries can obviously use this took keep all appropriate websites handy for the students to use in one place. This has redefined bookmarking as we know it!

Thing # 16

I already use MyMy Yahoo!, MySpace, and facebook currently. Many of this is already similar to what I use on a daily basis at home. I am able to add widgets, personalize my layouts, upload pictures and create photo albums, create images and post to my sites, add applications to play with, etc. It's all about generating the html format and copying and pasting it to your site. Some of my favorite sites to use when editing my pages are Pyzam, Yahoo!widgets, and playlist. Lilypie is other good for those with children and Glitter Graphics is fun to play with. I discovered the google calendar in thing # 12 and really enjoyed using it. I think it will be useful as well at school and can be shared with my team members as well as the other staff. This would be a great tool for our principal to use and share with us. I know she often has to check with us about staff development dates, etc. I know that most of us at my school have been using the traditional Credit Union calendar that we get every year. I think this year I may change that and try something new! I know that I forget things written down in that calendar if I do not look at it periodically and have it handy. Pop up reminders will come in handy and help me out. =) I think the to do lists are a lot of work just like the Palm Pilot which has faded away over the years. The Palm has now evolved into a feature of many cell phones, etc. I would rather write it down or make a document on word and print it out. I think the best tool that I have discovered is the use of the online calendar to keep me organized. I have many uses for it. As for homepages, I already use several and they are great!

Thing # 15

I really love the "...in Plain English" videos to explain "things". They let you know how easy it can be and how anyone can use them. They are funny too! I played around in the MISD Sandbox and found some interesting ideas to use. I added my ideas on using Zoho and Glypho to the Web 2.0 Collaborative tools part. This is a great way to share ideas with teachers across the district. I think that it is way better than email and more convenient. I think teachers will soon see the benefits of a wiki. It is a funny name that I never knew the meaning of until now. I only thought it was short for Wikipedia and now I know the true meaning is "fast" from Hawaii. Who knew what a wiki really was? It was an online encyclopedia at your fingertips for me. It means so much more now and I can't wait to set up one and use it in the classroom.

Thing # 14

First I went to bubbl.us and played with it. The site calls them "mind maps", which reminds me a lot of the thinking maps we use today. They are definitely good for using in writing. This site could organize ideas and help students process their thoughts during the prewriting step. It would be something different than the traditional bubble map. I also went to Flowchart. These maps ar also similar to ones we use in Social Studies and Reading. They help make difficult concepts easier to grasp for students. We are now in the day and age of learning visually and kinesthetically. This site can help students see relationships or present outcomes in a way that makes sense to them. Both sites seemed to be useful and practical for school. I could use both in several subjects for various lessons. Kids are so technologically savvy that these types of things make it more fun for them to do traditional assignments. They can "play" on the computer instead and still be learning. I think it is a great thing and awesome that MISD has offered this course for teachers. I think ALL teachers should be required to take "23 Things". I am excited about the new school year and plan on trying some of these things out. Traditional classrooms will never look the same!

Thing # 13

Wow! I like Zoho...it's so convenient and easy to use. I like how I can set up these "things" through my same email address and password in google. I may change my email and homepage to google, just for the convenience. I hate having to memorize many passwords for many sites! I have them on a spread sheet on my computer just to keep up with them, lol. I set up the account on Zoho Writer and began playing around to see what Zoho could do. I wondered if I could do everything I do on Word and Excel on this site. There were not as many fonts to choose from. I liked how you can share the documents and have discussions about them on the left hand corner. As I went along, I found that is was adequate and had more to offer. I also discovered Glypho along the way. It seemed like a fun way to write stories in the classroom. I could start one of these for the class and have all the students contribute to the story. It even has a feature that allows users to review and vote on contributions to the story. I think it would be a wonderful tool for the classroom. I might try this next year with either the laptops or in the computer lab. It could even be a writing center on the classroom computers.

Thing # 12

I love it! I use Google for everything and I knew that it had options, but never knew so many. This gave me the opportunity to play around and actually learn how to use the options available to me. I can do EVERYTHING on the web. Goodbye to pencil and paper, lol! I first started with the Google Alert,. That was interesting because I found so many topics I enjoyed and wanted to be alerted about. I found it to be similar to RSS feeds. It seems that so many "things" are related in the Web 2.0 world. I then realized I was about to crowd my email inbox and had to stop at just a few alerts. I could be updated just about anything I wanted to know.I also tried out
google calendar and just loved it! I spent over an hour on this one. It was the desk calaendar I had on my desk, only on the computer. I spent my time adding all my events, appointments, work schedules, etc. for the next few months to the calendar. I love to be organized and have everything written down, so this was my favorite part of this "thing". The only thing that bothers me about all this Web 2.0 stuff is that you share with the whole world to see. That isn't always the best thing with Identity Theft, stalkers, hackers, and pedifiles in this world. I think I will play with it a little more and see if this will work as a school calendar for parents at home. I could update it and write in things going on in the classroom for parents to see. iGoogle seemed a lot like My Yahoo! which I already use. These types of sites are useful and are looked at daily. You can make them your homepage and visit them often. They can be personalized like many Web 2.0 websites with widgets, feeds, weather, whatever you like!

Thing # 11

I continued to explore RSS with my Google reader. I found some great sites to subscribe to and found myself lost in all there was available. I stayed away from the prepackaged bundles so that my feeds could be customized to what I enjoy. I was able to locate many blogs, facebook, and MySpace of friends and family. I remembered some sites from my other class on del.icio.us. I typed in websites that I new on the search feature as well as typed in topics that came to mind to find feeds available. I also filtered out some by looking at the number of subscribers to the left of the suggested feed. I peeked into several other blogs to see what other classmates had found. As I said before, I never really got into blogging. I find that it is so interesting to hear what other people have to say and know what is going on with other people also. I added several blogs to my reader and many more sites I found interesting. I am at about 20 feeds right now, I think I might go over that soon!