THING 16

Library Thing....I have to admit that I am not much of a reader (sorry to all the librarians that are doing this class)! However, I must say that I did find this Library Thing website very helpful. I absolutely loved the Stephanie Meyer Twilight series and I loved the feature on the Library THing where you can type in a book that you have read and it suggests other books that you might like to read. I am also in graduate school and have to do a lot of research and I can see how this website will save my life with my upcoming thesis paper. I love to be able to type in topics and the websites do all the work for me!

As for my classroom, I am not sure how I would incorporate the Library Thing in math, but I can see how it would be extremely helpful for reading teachers, especially the group feature. You could have your students start their own group and list all of the books they read throughout the year as well as add a mini blog about what the book was about and what they enjoyed most about the book.

THING 13

I made images using the Trading Card Maker and Mosaic Maker. My image for the trading card is here with the fire background: This was actually really easy. You just click on this link: http://bighugelabs.com/deck.php and you can begin to upload your photos to whatever background and trading card you choose. I chose the fire background because this is a picture of my husband at his fire station. The next image I created was with Mosaic Maker. With the Mosaic Maker you can make a collage of all different kinds of photos, including your own photos in your library. I used two photos of me one of my wedding and the other of my wedding shower to create like a mini collage. The picture is to the left. It was also easy to create. You go back to the website: http://bighugelabs.com/mosaic.php. From here you just upload your own files to the mosaic maker or you can use some from Flickr. I found this to be a great experience because I felt one could use this for many uses in the classroom as well as personal uses. In the classroom, wouldn't this be a great way for students to add their own creativity to an assignment. For example, in math I could ask them to create a collage using the Mosaic Maker of all different equilateral triangles to see if they understand what an equilateral triangle is. I have found in education that the more students can add their own into an assignment, the better they do. For personal use, I found this very helpful. You could use the Trading Card maker to make shower invitations and such things and you would be able to add your own personal touch to the mix.

THING 23

I just got done exploring Classroom 2.0, and found many things to be valuable on this educator social networking site. I was scrolling through the Forums and found a woman teacher asking for any pointers on a "paperless" classroom. I thought to myself, I wonder what she means by that and who posted comments on her forum. So I clicked on it. I found many comments to her forum from educators around the world, and I thought to myself what an excellent source for educators to get comments/ideas from people all over the world from all different genres of teaching! I could definately see how these educator social networking sites could be of great help to educators. What an excellent tool to use to share ideas that worked or ideas that might work in classrooms. I found this a very useful tool that I added into my Gooogle Reader so I can spend some time weekly going through the forums and looking at all the educators comments/ideas and also responding with my thoughts.

THING 7B

When I was looking at classroom 2.0, the social networking site for teachers, I found a lady that asked for any pointers on going "paperless" in the classroom. Then I found a link to this Blog The Innovative Educator. It talks about this teacher in Manhattan that goes "green" in the classroom and the classroom becomes virtually paperless because everything is done through computers and via projectors. The students carry around a flash drive and all things are done via laptops. I found this an incredibly interesting thing. I thought I bet this classroom is incredibly engaging. No more pencils and paper and boring book that the students don't really care about, but fully engaging them in the technology that they are all accustomed to! I hope that this is going to be the wave of the future. I hope that all schools take a good hard look at this and realize the potential impact this could have on our students!

THING 22

Social Networking. I already have a facebook account created. The link is Shiann Scheu. I think it is important for educators to know about these social networking sites because this is what our kids are all about. You can ask any student from around 5th all the way to high school ,and they will all tell you that they either have a facebook account, myspace account, or both. As an educator you can use these new technologies to inspire your students, but you have to be careful with such networking sites because not all information is filtered. I like that you can establish security settings where only your friends can see your profile. I think this is important because of privacy. As an educator, we must set an example, and you have to be careful how you present yourself on these social networks. I do not like that you people can get on there and keep making status updates and when you log on you have pages and pages of updates to weed through...most of the updates are not even interesting, but will be about now washing my car or something. Again, this could be a useful site, but one has to be careful under the realm of educaiton as not all information on these social networking sites are filtered.

THING 12

Okay...I think I did it...here is my slideshow: http://www.rockyou.com/show_my_gallery.php?source=ppsl&instanceid=154337463

The pictures are as follows: The brown building was called Natchez, Miss The link is: http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2179061292/ It is from the Library of Congress. The planet sphere picture's link is http://www.flickr.com/photos/smithsonian/2941498070/ It was from the Smithsonian and the name of it is: The fifth planet from the sun

as seen at a distance of about 400 million miles. The third picture was that of a clothes line and it's link is as follows:http://www.flickr.com/photos/jkreileder/2973224980/ The author is Jurgen Kreileder. I will use this to show them real life examples of two dimensional and three dimensional shapes.

THING 11

This photo is by Uploaded on October 25, 2008
by Jürgen Kreileder Here is the link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jkreileder/2973224980/

I loved this activity because there is so many wonderful photos that you can use for classroom projects/ideas/presentations. My idea for this photo was to use it when we start talking about Quadrilaterals to show them what parallel lines look like, especially a real world example which they all need. Another way I plan on using Flickr is when we start studying triangles, as well as three dimensional shapes so they can connect their learning with real world examples. I would not normally put so much effort into searching for photos for a lesson, but now that I have done it I can see how useful Flickr can be for educators.

THING 7(A)

I found this on one of my readers, School Matters blog. The title alone will ignite a fire under many teachers, "Memphis city schools line up merit pay..." The blog is at http://schoolsmatter.blogspot.com/2009/10/headline-memphis-city-schools-line-up.html. So Memphis is teaming up with the Gates family hoping to revamp the educational system. They want to make the education system resemble those of corporate based systems that follow market guidelines and such. This will be a great "bait" for many future educators, who do not know what they are getting themselves into. Anyone that would push merit based pay has not been teaching recently when the tests are getting harder and our students seem to be left behind. If they want to offer merit based pay on top of a salary, then I am all for that, but just going solely to merit based pay is unreasonable and I feel will hurt the education system in the long run. I'll be watching this blog for further information on this topic.

THING 10

Okay, so we all get that speech every year about copyright laws. It is usually during staff development and it is usually long and boring. However, this particular "thing 10" got me thinking. I might actually need to pay attention to the cc logo more often. Everyone thinks that copyright is something they don't do, but really it involves very touchy things. If you use even a small part of someone's work, even if it be images, you have to put their name on it. If you copy multiple things out of a book and make mass copies, you have to put their names on the parts that you used. Copyright can be very tricky! We need to teach our kids about it, just like we are taught. However, it might be helpful to teach it in a more interesting way rather than a typical boring power point!

I do use digital photos and videos in my teaching, but always make sure that the cc logo is somewhere on them. I make sure to give credit to those who made these photos/videos in order for me to use them. When you ask students to make projects which include photos/videos, it is important to tell them that they must include the author's name and publication in order to avoid copyright infiringement.

THING 8

At the beginning of the school year, we were introduced to Wiki, but I just kind of brushed it off thinking ok I have way too much to do to worry about another thing on my plate! However, I got involved in this class, and it has really opened my mind up to the endless realm of possibilities of technology. I would love to create, and WILL create a Wiki for my students. I want them to be able to share information with one another, and all of their different ideas! It is so great when I am teaching, and one of my students will give me a different way to solve it then I had ever thought! I want them to be able to teach each other like they have been able to teach me!

THING 7

Commenting...I'm not a woman of many words. I do not always voice my opinion when I read things that either inspire me or ignite a fire in me. Instead of responding with words, I tend to reflect inward! It is hard for me to give my comments because I generally want to fly under the radar so to speak. I am definately not one to rock the boat! However, after reading and posting comments for this class, I have come to realize how helpful people's comments can really be. It can provide great constructive criticism, and help you create ideas from other people's ideas. It really is a great way to communicate. I have really had to come out of my comfort zone for this class, and it has been an amazing experience!

THING 6

I subscribed to a feed called I want to teach forever. This is a blog full of extremely helpful information for specifically math teachers, which I am. I scrolled through all of the blogs and found some extremely helpful information on things such as how to make tutoring more exciting, and new creative ways to teach certain topics. Not only was this blog extremely helpful, but I really enjoyed searching for blogs that interested me and subscribing to them. It is amazing how many wonderful ideas one can get from other people just by reading the feeds. I feel that the Reader is an extremely helpful tool for me to stay current on my issues that I am interested in. I will definately continue to subscribe to feeds that I am interested in.

THING 5

I found this on the Infinite Thinking Machine Feed. It is about this little girl in Oklahoma that posted this YouTube video about President Obama's Speech. Her mom is writing about having to go through all of the comments and decided which ones to allow to post. In this feed she states that she is glad that her child was open-minded enough to see the speech and that the little boy in her class needs to open his mind up. The little boy said he wasn't allowed to watch Obama's speech because he was a Republican. Now, I did not agree with Sarah's mothers comment. I think that everyone is entitled to their own beliefs. Whether it be Republican or Democrat, it is important for you to decide for yourself what ideas you want to believe in and be associated with. That is what makes America great is that we get to decide. So what if the little boy's parents said he couldnt see it. That is their belief, and that is how they best see fit to care for their family, just as Sarah's parents felt she needed to see the video. I feel that we should always reserve the right to choose what we want to believe in and what's best for our families.

Criteria for moderating comments on a viral video

by infinitethinking@gmail.com (Infinite Thinking Machine)

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