Thing #17 - Tagging and Social Bookmarking with Delicious

Delicious is a very creative and useful tool. I, personally, had no idea sites like this even existed. It makes sense to be able to categorize your bookmarks with tags and share them with others, but I guess it just never really occurred to me that I would need a system like that. I can use the 'public' feature of delicious to share sites regarding class content that I find useful with my students. I can even categorize the sites by subject area with tags so my students can easily find relevant sources for their studies. It's not just students that can benefit from delicious either. Teachers can use the site to share resources they have found on instructional methods, course content, professional development, and many many other things.

Thing #16 - Getting Organized with Web 2.0 Tools

I created my start page through www.netvibes.com because I liked the layout of the site and it had many different options for me to customize my page. I really like the newsfeed app and how the site already has very common apps available to you for download. If I were to invest a little more time into it I could probably make it a pretty cool and productive home page.

I produced an online calendar through 30boxes.com. It's really useful for scheduling important dates, getting stuff done and remembering birthdays among many other things. Regarding school, I could use this site to make a calendar for my class that I would be able to share with my students online.

One of the tools that I found most useful and would recommend to others is the PDF Converter. This useful tool converts images and documents into PDFs, which are more commonly used in the professional world.

Thing #15 - Wikis

After watching the video on wikis and editing a part of the RSS feed portion of the APSU 23 Things Sandbox wiki, I have come to a better understanding of how wikis work. I can use wikis in class as an organizational tool to plan anything from field trips to in-class group activities. By opening up a wiki page to my students I am allowing them to give their input on class subjects and activities. I could also use a wiki page as a platform for answering questions from students. Additionally, my students could resume their group work, which began in school, at home by collaborating on a wiki space.

The possibilities are endless. I find the concept of wiki pages to be somewhat revolutionary. I guess it takes a little bit of trust in one another to open up a wiki page for all to edit and save content to. However, that is the way students learn best, by sharing ideas and working with one another, not necessarily for the teacher.

Thing #14 - Mapping My Mind and Figuring Out the Flow

For the flowchart application I chose www.gliffy.com because it was the most user friendly of the two (I didn't have to wait up to a day for permission to use it). I might use this tool to create graphic organizers that help my students better understand biological concepts. Additionally, this application would be especially useful for having students create food webs or energy diagrams in class.

For the mind map activity I used www.mindmeister.com because the thumbnail for it looked like a brain, and for some reason that resonates with me. Anyway, I would use Mind Meister for my personal use as a to-do list. My brain kind of goes in all different directions sometimes so I thought this application would be fitting. Within my classroom students could use this tool to brainstorm and organize their ideas. This would benefit the students in their writing as well as in problem solving scenarios.

Thing #13 - Google Drive

Here is a link to my Google Drive Document!

My students will be able to use Google Drive as a collaborative tool because it is so easy to share information and ideas on this platform. One of the major applications students can use this tool for is drafting group projects. They can share their progress with one another and add to each other's work until they come up with a finished product.

Zoho and Google Drive are very similar in the fact that they allow users to create word documents, spreadsheets, and presentations among many other things. However, I feel as though Google Drive is more user friendly, but Zoho has more to offer businesses. I'd prefer Google Drive just because it's more universally known and I don't intend on using it for business purposes. I even designed a cute drawing of my dream pet (below) in Google Drive. What's not to love?

Dog Drawing

Thing #12 - Exploring Google

Google scholar was the first tool I explored. This tool allowed me to search for peer-reviewed scholarly articles with ease. I could simply type in a subject of interest to me and any research studies that had been performed and written about in a professional journal were available to me. Google even noticed that I was an Austin Peay student so that any journal article available through APSU's library were now available to me online through a link next to the article. Another unique feature was that you could cite articles in many different formats just by clicking cite underneath the article header. I could implement this tool in my class whenever my students are writing a research paper for me or whenever I need to freshen up my own content knowledge in the sciences.

The other tool I investigated was the alert system. This tool sends an alert to your email whenever a feed is made regarding your subject of interest. I made an alert to send any important information regarding "Cystic Fibrosis Kalydeco" to my email as it happens. This will allow me to stay on top of this information immediately as it becomes available. I thought this was a very useful tool for the classroom because I could have my students set up an alert system for any feeds that pop up on my classroom blog.

Thing #11 - Finding Good Feeds

All of the methods for finding feeds were relatively easy to navigate, but if I had to choose I would use the Google Blog search. It's as easy as typing in your topic of interest in the toolbar and clicking search. Immediately, a list of the premier blogs related to your search pop up. I also liked using blog search engine because it had thumbnails next to the different blogs. Technorati was easily the most confusing. First, you had to choose between a post or blog search. Secondly, the blogs weren't an any particular order of importance or popularity from what I could see. Lastly, half of the links I clicked on for blogs I wanted to visit didn't even work.

I found a few useful feeds. One such feed was about high school girls soccer in TN. I was particularly interested in this feed because I coach high school girls soccer. Another feed I decided to follow was regarding eating a completely raw diet. I thought this blog was very interesting and unique. I found it was very hard to eat a completely raw diet but the author found marvelous benefits from the change in lifestyle.

One method I found for finding newsfeeds was to look at what other bloggers were using. To add to my newsfeed I would simply just look for the universal orange icon or subscription logo.