Thing # 12

I tried out all of the Google tools, and they all seemed like they would be useful in one way or another. I was most interested in the notebook because I thought it would be a great tool whenever I'm working on projects that require research from several different sites. I was disappointed to learn that they aren't accepting any new "sign-ups" for notebook, so that was a bummer. I also liked the Calendar and Picasa tools. I'm a person who REALLY likes things to be organized, and I keep calendars everywhere... so I might as well have one with Google too. Any of the picture/image websites are always going to be useful for enhancing powerpoints, other presentations, or just for the fun of browsing. The only thing I'm not sure about is why I would want my calendar, etc. to be public knowledge... Sharing pictures with family, friends, and students is a cool idea though. I haven't set up a Picasa page for myself yet, but I plan on it.

Thing # 11

The search tools I think are good are: Google Blog Search and Technorati, but I'm honestly a little overwhelmed by all of them. I can't get Feedster to work at all, but the other ones have such a vast amount of information hitting me right in the face, that I'm not sure I really understand what I'm supposed to be doing. I did some searches for "History Teacher/Education" blogs and other things like that, but my search results would include everything under the sun. I did find some useful things, but it's really going to take a while for me to master these blog searching tools. I really feel that searching through Google Reader for newsfeeds is the easiest way for me to find information at this point, until I get more experience with all of this.

Thing # 10

This RSS/newsreaders exercise was really interesting. I didn't have a clue about RSS before this, and I was honestly a little concerned that it would be difficult to create when I started reading. It was actually fairly easy once I got the hang of it, and I chose to use Google Reader. I could utilize this technology in the classroom by simply keeping up to date with world news and events. I think that is one thing that is greatly lacking in students' lives... an understanding of what's happening in the world around them. Having an RSS feed to news websites will give me access to up to date news that I could share with my class. I also have an RSS feed to the Smithsonian Institution's History website, which has lesson suggestions and teaching guides that are standards based. This website has a lot of projects/lessons that are really student oriented, and encourages them to participate more. I'm sure that there are other feeds out there that would allow teachers of other subjects to get access to the same types of helpful material. Personally, I also created RSS feeds that I could use for my own enjoyment (like an ESPN feed), that may not really be relevant in the classroom but is still cool to have. I hope I remeber to take advantage of the RSS feature, because I'm so used to going directly from website to website, but once I get used to it- I think it will be a very fun and interesting tool.

Thing # 9

I went to the websites that were listed and messed around with each of them. The one I ended up creating an image with was from http://www.imagechef.com/ic/make.jsp?tid=Blimp. There are a ton of uses for the websites in the classroom, this particular image would be a good opener for a first-day class introduction. It could be the opening slide in a powerpoint presentation, or something like that. There were a variety of different images to choose from, so it would probably be pretty easy to find some images that are relevant to whatever you may be teaching that day, and then play around with the image to increase student interest. The sites were all fairly easy to use and pretty self explanatory. Yet again, I found some pretty cool things that I never knew existed before this exercise.

Thing # 8

Well, for my "Thing # 8" post, I used the mosaic maker, and after a great deal of deep and serious thought... I decided I'd make a mosaic of a few of my favorite cartoons growing up. This of course has nothing to do with education, but the application could definitely be a useful tool when different subject matter is used. It would be a cool way to make a collage of great photos to use in a presentation or powerpoint. Since there's an endless amount of pictures out there, I would use this application to find photographs that were relevant to whatever time period in history I may be teaching, and it would hopefully enhance the lesson quite a bit. I actually created another mosaic that consisted of images from the Great Depression (which is what my powerpoint covers). I thought I'd stick with the lighter material for this post. It took some time to get used to how this application worked, but it was a pretty easy process overall.

Thing #7

I really enjoyed looking at all the pictures on Flickr. This website would be an excellect source for finding photos to use in projects, presentations, etc. There are almost TOO many pictures on the website...I spent a lot of time just browsing and didn't realize it. Since I love the outdoors and found a lot of great landscape shots, I thought I'd attach this one from the Netherlands. All I could find about the photographer is that his name is Ben, I couldn't figure out how to locate more information about him. I just thought it was really cool how he captured these animals in the picture, it almost looks staged.


Here's the Flickr link http://www.flickr.com/photos/visbeek/4267275776/