Thing #13

Well, I'd decided to take the road less traveled by and use Zoho to publish my # 13 blog. We'll see how this goes.

But, I really like Zoho. It's simple and accessible. You don't have to be some kind of computer genius to work it (like with Word it sometimes seems). That and there are a lot of cool things you can use. Like the calender and planner. It's a fun tool that could make your life simpler is you let it.

I think though that this would be most effective for someone who doesn't have a computer at home. They could log onto Zoho, write out their paper, and save it. And when the paper is ready, send it to the teacher in the file type he or she wants. Another option is for people who have a computer but don't have Word. I can't tell you how many times I heard people complaining because they had this or that word processor and it wasn't compatible so they were unable to submit their work. I'm typing on the answer right here.

Oh, and the post right to your blog thing. About half and hour later and I've given up! Uggh, so hard. Kept saying something about being on the https part of Zoho... 

Thing #4

Hello there! Making one final post before mid-term. The infamous "Thing Number Four"!

I, of course, have been following five of my classmates, whose blogs have been fun to see! It's funny to see that we're doing the same thing but come up with very different experiences and ideas for education. But here are my fellow bloggers: BloggeRiley, maKing it oKaye!, HALLA BACK, Cotton Candy, and Alex McDaniel's Blog. I liked seeing what worked for them and their views on what we were learning thoughout the semester.
Outside blogs I follow are:
New Dress A Day, this is the ongoing (though nearly completed journey) of a Marisa Lynch who after being laid off and watched Julie and Julia decided she'd to a project of her own. So for one year with $365 she was going to find bargain (really ugly) clothes and transform them into something cute and current. So far she's on day 313 and has two dollars more then the minimum dollar per dress. Sweet. I enjoy this blog because it really shows how fun and inspiring a blog can be. Not just some person whining or complaining or be egocentric but showing the world that you can have fun and be conservative with your money!!
The Church o' Blevins, this blog is upkept by a church friend's son who decided he and his friends were going to walk the AppalachianTrail. And blog about it. What I found most fun about this was the fact that they updated the blog by using someone's iPhone when they could get a signal. I also like the blog because it's a journal about an adventure and hey who doesn't like adventure?

Also, Google Alerts: still so AWESOME!

Thing #12

Finally here!!

I love it when the site says, "go ahead and play around with it as you like". I always get this evil grin and start chuckling.
I played with Google Alerts and Google Translate. I LOVE Google alert. That thing is so cool! I typed in my favorite actor for my alert...I haven't gotten anything yet but here's hoping! And what I found so cool about this tool is you don't need a Google e-mail account for it to work. I used my Yahoo! account (which I've had since I was like 12), so the compatibility is wonderful. I always hate it when you want to use a cool new tool and you have to create a whole new account somewhere different. Not this time!! This would be useful in education because you could create an alert for news to use for current events talks and information your students might be studying soon.
I also played with Google Translate. I typed a phrase in and got the German phrase, "Hallo, Herr Albert. Ich mag zum Kuchen essen." See if you can plug it back in and get the phrase I typed in! This tool would be wonderful if you had ELL learners. You would be able to send notes and information to their parents (granted you would want to keep it simple, I mean it is just a free online translator). But you could also find sites for them in their native language and check the relevancy and content by using the tool where you can translate the whole page!

on a side note: I just got an alert! Teehee this gadget is so cool!

Thing #11

I subscribed to another feed. It was one of the Edublog winners! The one that won best Library/Librarian Blog, HeyJude. My goal after finishing my undergraduate work here is to get my Masters in Library Science and become a librarian so I looked though a few posts and thought this was a great blog to add and keep up with.
Of the search tools I liked Google Blog search the best (I just plain like Google!). It was familiar and easy to work with because it was like searching for anything though Google, except for the fact that you were looking for blogs and nothing else. The other tool were not all that confusing, but ever since doing all these 23Things I've just become more adaptable.
I actually didn't get that long to search so I didn't really find anything unusual but I think I found some interesting stuff!!

Thing #10

RSS feed is so nifty!!! I can check all of my online comics updated all in one place! And not have to click like twenty million buttons. That video was right, this is a time saver.
And for educators, time is precious. You could check the news feeds and blogs that you have saved for teaching as well as the ones you have for yourself, all in one fell swoop! And since you are only alerted when something is updated, you feel you can watch more than just a couple of things. Therefore, there can be more educator blogs that you register for and you can have more information for teaching.
Of the five you have to subscribe to, four of my feeds are geeky related things (Like the Heroes news). But I did subscribe to Cool Cat Teacher. She had a cool game on there that supposed to help with social skills and expressing feelings. Which is actually kind of funny because we were just talking about that in Diversity. 

Thing #9

Image Chef is the easiest site to work with. The image generators I played with were the ones where you just plug in words and it appears on the sign or note or what have you. I thought it was fun but a little restricting. The thing I really wanted to play with on Image Chef was the Sketchpad but the blasted thing wouldn't do anything no matter what I did. It's like it didn't register me clicking on it. Oh and here are the photos I did create on Image Chef.

This is me and a Mac computer.

What I thought would have been really fun was the comic strip maker but that was a bust. It placed the speech bubble right in the smack dab middle of the photo and I could not figure out how to move the bubble around. I would have been a lot better if you could drag and click.
I couldn't think of any way you could use these things in the classroom, except to make cute photos like a street sign that said "Miss Dean's class this way". Nothing useful, but why does everything have to be useful?