Thing # 17 - Delicious

The social bookmarking site Delicious is a wonderful way to bookmark and save specific information found on the internet for later use. I enjoyed using Delicious and will probably continue to use it in the future. It is helpful to save webpages and links to certain topics that I may be browsing on any computer, not just my home or work computer. Another great thing that I noticed about Delicious is that it allows you to create "stacks" of bookmarked links that are narrowed to your liking. You can then share these "stacks" of links with others by making them public. Teachers can take advantage of this social bookmarking tool by simply being social. When you add educational friends, you open your circle of educational influence and gain ideas for more effective teaching strategies to be used inside your classroom. I found Delicious very similar to Diigo in its use of tags. Tags are a great way of organizing your multitude of bookmarks. Also through tags, you are able to view other people's information more efficiently by the tag that they narrow their saved information with. Since I am fairly new to Diigo and Delicious, I am going to navigate through and utilize both for a while to see which one I think will fit best into my lifestyle and preferences.

Thing # 16 - Getting Organized

After looking at the different "intro" pages I chose to create and customize a homepage for my home computer through iGoogle. This homepage creator stood out to me because of its ease of use and also because it is an extension of Google, and Google is pretty awesome. My primary email address that I use is through Gmail and I also enjoy the RSS Reader that Google offers. Another reason why I chose iGoogle, is because my blog is also through Google and it just makes more sense to me to try and keep everything integrated together and simple. That is the reason why we take the time to create and utilize these different applications anyways, to simplify our lives. I enjoyed customizing my page by adding different features and widgets that I found useful, such as a translator. I also added a little hamster to my page that I can feed...he is pretty cute. The online calendar that I chose, was the Google calendar. This feature is so wonderful, as it allows you to share events that you have saved with other people. You can even color code different appointments or listings to distinguish between the contributions of different people sharing a calendar together. I also have an Iphone and I am able to sync my phone calendar to accept the Google calendar. I must admit that I love how easy and efficient Google applications. Online calendars are useful as they allow you to share important dates with others and keep you thoroughly professional and organized.

When I tried to access the Mystickies site, I was able to sign up but then I had to download an extension for my browser (FireFox). After all this, it decided it didn't want to work for me. I attempted to try out Backpack as well, but it boasted a "free 30 day trial" and in my experience, those never work out right. Therefore, I decided to pass on this application as well. So, I opted to add a "to do list" to my iGoogle page instead. I feel confident that I am going to like this feature, as it seems handy and isn't complicated or too much work to maintain. A very useful program for teachers and students is www.zamzar.com. This website is a free and simple online file converter. Did I mention that it was free AND simple? 

Thing # 15 - Wikis

The assignment was interesting as I have never edited or created a wiki space before. I have been familiar with them, but I have never actually contributed to them. It was fairly easy to edit the page with my personal information and adjustments. I simply used the link that was offered in the apsu23thingsblogspot, created a free user account with my email and password information, and then I joined the wiki group. After joining the wiki group I was able to edit and change basically anything that was uploaded or saved prior to my additions. I navigated through some of the different posts and thought it was pretty neat to see how long these posts have been going on, some of them dating back to over three years ago! However, I posted under our section in apsu23thingssandbox and uploaded a picture of my nephew that I created in Flickr mashups while working on Thing #8.

I believe that Wikis are a great way for teachers, librarians, and even students to communicate, educate, and inform. After browsing through some of the links that were provided in the Discovery Exercise, I got an idea of just how some wikis are used in the educational system. Some libraries are using wiki spaces as Reference Centers that provide multiple different links that cover everything from recommended books and material collections to fund-raising and marketing. I also like the idea of teachers using the wiki spaces as a way to communicate effectively to their students for syllabuses, important announcements, and even helpful links that may aid the student further in their learning. Educational wikis are informative and may contain news about current events or even emerging technological tools. They really are a great interactive tool that allow for collaboration and creativity in another controlled setting, other than the classroom. When I become a teacher, I may plan to implement one for announcements and informative links for the parents and students.

Thing # 14 - Flowcharts and Mind Maps

Out of the four different recommended sites to explore, I chose to try Gliffy and Bubble. I also attempted to access the other two, but flowchart was going to take longer than one day and MindMeister started to get into "30 day free trials" and having to pay for a subscription. Unfortunately, in my experience, anything that has ever had "free trials" has always charged me and been quite a hassle to cancel or get straightened out. So I chose to veer away from both of these. However, I did really enjoy the ease of use of Gliffy and Bubble. Gliffy is a great site that offers so many different customization options for making a flowchart. I was really impressed with how easy it was to just jump in and start creating something. Although there are other versions of Gliffy that require a fee, trying it's basic features out really was free and I didn't have to set up an account. Flowcharts can be very helpful in showing a series of events or a specific step by step process of doing something. I also like that you have the option of making Venn diagrams. I have always thought that the "overlapping" concept of Venn diagrams is a great way to show common factors of similar or even different things. That being said, I think that I might consider making a Venn diagram to upload into my powerpoint or word document to help explain creative commons for substandard 6.9.

Like Gliffy, Bubble was easy to utilize and you can just jump right into creating a document without signing in. I did have a little bit of trouble trying to figure out how to connect bubbles together underneath two separate bubbles. So, I will say that it has a little bit of a learning curve. However, it is a nice tool to make a "mind map" of a thought process or even a family tree. You can link bubbles and even color code different items that may have a similar association. When I wanted to save my material, I had to then create a free account with Bubble. Mind Maps are a great tool to use in a classroom, as they can help with organizing thoughts. For example, a teacher may use a mind map in a creative writing lesson or when trying to teach about creating a main idea in a paragraph with supporting sentences and a conclusion. Mind Maps allow students to visualize what they are thinking and efficiently arrange their thoughts so they can express them more clearly on paper. Bubble is a good website that allows students to create quick mind maps for their writing or for a teacher to utilize in order to explain a lesson better.

Thing # 13 - Zoho Writer and Google Docs

This activity opened my eyes to a few more options of word processors. It was not hard to sign up for Zoho Writer, or even navigate through the site. I found it very user friendly. I currently use Microsoft Word for all of my word documents. However, the nice thing that I found about the Zoho Writer site was that you can create and save a word document within the site. Zoho Writer can be very helpful for storing important documents as well, because it also incorporates an import feature which allows you to upload previously created documents from other software into Zoho. Another feature that I like about Zoho is that it is interactive and allows you to share your work with others. Sharing a document can help with collaboration on a specific topic or it can even help in having someone proofread and make suggestions for your paper. As far as creating a header and setting the page layouts to a specific format, I didn't have any problems. If anything, I felt that the options that the Zoho word processor has are simple, limited to necessities, and not complicated to customize.

When it comes to Google Documents, I am already a pretty avid user. Like Zoho Writer, you are able to create and save documents. You are also able to upload and share or collaborate on documents with other users. One thing that I really love about Google documents is that it has read many documents for me that were unreadable due to a specific year of Microsoft word. For example, on my work computer I have an older version of Microsoft 2003 and at home I have the Microsoft 2007 version. There have been many times that I have had a professor upload a document into D2L that was not readable on my work computer because of the conflicting software. When I have had this issue, I have simply been able to save the "incompatible" document from the teacher on my work computer and then upload the file into Google documents to be read. This has saved me so much time and stress! On top of word documents, you can also make spreadsheets, forms, and even drawings. Below is the "drawing" that I was able to make through Google Documents.

Students are able to use Google documents in collaborative ways by sharing their word documents with others for such things as corrections or even to co-write a story or paragraph over the internet. Teachers would be able to use Google documents to create spreadsheets for their grade books or attendance. They could even design forms for parents using the form option. Lastly, teachers can utilize the drawing feature and create visual learning tools to use inside the classroom, like the one above. After exploring through both applications, I would have to say that I still prefer Google Docs. This is in part to do with that I already frequently use many different Google Applications every day, and find them very efficient. My main email is Gmail and Google documents is easily navigable from my main page. Although I do find Zoho Writer to be a nice online word processor and slightly more efficient when incorporating headers and formats, I feel that Google documents is just more convenient for me, specifically.