Thing #19

Visit TeacherPop

Are You in the Club?

     

     Are you making the best of the social networks that are available?  TeacherPop is an online community that is built by a teacher from my University.  TeacherPop is  connecting new teachers with one another every day with a social network that is much the same as any other network, but it is focused for educators.  This is the future.  Soon, lesson plans will be things that people will share across the country with ease and personal touches.  It's already being done via downloads, but sites like teacherpop are going to change the way we, as educators look at the world that we teach with. 

      I am apart of several different sites that are moving forward in a professional manner.  I love music, as I am a musician, therefore I follow what is new, upcoming, and exciting for me in that environment.  

     One site that I would suggest to anybody that is interested in communicating with others over a professional network of musicians is:  PureVolume 

     

   PureVolume is an open site that allows you to communicate with others who share the same taste in music, as well as the same ideas in music.  Share music and talk it over with friends; it doesn't get much better than that.

     By having a firm grasp on what is out there for social networks you are including yourself in a never stopping wave of change that will never hesitate in motion.  This is a lesson that students should know.  There are resources that involve other people's thoughts, reactions, and so forth.  By understanding that students can research bias and demographics on social media sites you are giving a new taste to your teaching.  Engage students in reaching into new places that are available to them.  They will learn so much on their own if we let them.  Homework could simply be, "Find a Band that you believe in, then write about why you believe they are a band worth investing in."  Easy enough.  Students will be working on creating a bias belief in a personal favorite and supporting that with rhetoric.  Two birds, one stone.

     As for educators, there will always be great ideas that are thrown around with other professionals on sites such as TeacherPop.  Join up and find your niche. 

Thing #18

Friends, Hashes, and Likes

     I, like many others, have been involved in Facebook and Twitter for quite a long time now.  I use Facebook for a friend site.  A place to see comments and pics that exceed the professional line created by the 140 character limit that sets twitter apart from other sites.  Using these sites should be a major part of an educator's resources.  

     These sites provide a constant flow of information that can be shared, re-shared, and re-re-shared.  Twitter allows people to retweet messages in a way of sharing the information as a cited comment that refers back to its original writer.  This is definitely a pretty cool concept that has been executed by the twitter community.

Hashes

     The hash system is a way of bookmarking and sorting information that is tagged under a certain topic.  Any one person can search a hashtag name and find posts that are in some way connected to the hash.  For example, if I was looking for a good laugh then I could search:

#Angrycat 

     or

#peopleofwalmart

     I do respect both of these sites for their creativity, and I do feel that it is a great way to communicate with others.  For teachers, this is a great way for sharing information, sites, and resources.  However, I would argue that this should remain a personal site for personal uses.  I have seen many bullying cases that have derived from such sites.  

     I recommend both of these sites for educators, but I do advise to proceed with caution.

Feel Free to Follow me at www.facebook.com/madilinegrant

Thing #17

Social Bookie

   I am proud to admit that I am a veteran tagger ––a Social Bookie, if you will.  I love keeping things organized due to a very fun mental disorder that I have.  Tourette's Syndrome (TS) keeps my OCD in full effect, affecting me as much as it possibly can.  I am okay with this.  It has proven to help my wife find our wedding vowels, my brother to find the right logistics program, and me to be constantly organized with material things.  My thoughts are a different thing.

      I have been using two of the following sites for quite some time now, Stumbleupon and Delicious.  Both of these sites are great for tagging all of the material that is within my interest and are used to keep my mind very organized when I am searching for new ideas and information online.  Bookmark heaven, to say the least!

     I also looked into a new site for myself known as Digg.  Digg uses many of the same tools as Delicious and Stumbleupon, but i didn't find it as visually appealing as the other two sites, so I will be completely honest with you in that I didn't spend much time exploring the true potentials of this site; however, I do have faith that it is very efficient at tagging and so forth.

Let's use this for our future

   Another great part of tagging is it sets you up for success in the future.  I want to be prepared for my class when they need resources to use.  I know that I am enabling my self to be a great teacher by preparing for tomorrow.  I always make a separate account for myself when tagging educational items.  I use the settings to only allow sites that are appropriate for all ages.  

     

     Using these tags could save you so many hours of planning.  Find yourself some good unit plans online, and make sure to tag other teachers within that subject area.  This is a show of good faith and practice and I can guarantee that it will prove to be a tenfold return on those days when your creative mind motor is running on empty.

     Use the tags, Use the bookmarks, Use your friends...

Thing #16

Keep It 

Productive

     Let's face the facts:

1.  We get off track, even when we focus hard

2.  Our acuteness is growing with the use of new tools

3.  Our focus can get help from the new tools that offer some assistance.  

     I would like to introduce you to one way of keeping up with your daily news.  Much like an online startpage, FlipBoard is an app that is offered for download onto iPhones, iPads, and Mac computers.  It is a startpage that remains active with all of the up to the minute things that you need to keep you going throughout your day.

Make it your own

     This app is often referred to as a personal magazine that you can have on your phone or pad at all times.  It is free and links itself with all of your social networks while keeping the information that is fed onto your flipboard within your own personal preference.  Make it your own by utilizing the flipboard in ways that benefit you and your daily life.  Yes, you can keep it FUN!  

     It doesn't have to always be about your productivity, but it does have to do with you as a person.  By using flipboard, you are allowing yourself to be aware of all of your interests, reminders, social sites, and personal accounts on one page.  

     This app is a new way of using the different web source organization sites in one way, as your very own.  Take advantage of it now.  As you know, there is no telling when flipboard will be willing to sell itself to Facebook for a measly 1Billion Dollars.

Thing #15

Sandbox Time

Sandbox is a term used in wiki's that refers to areas of play for abstract ideas, fonts, and just plain old randomness.  It is able to be changed and reformatted due to the fact that it is a wiki page that allows for others to step in and move stuff around, or even enhance the material with color or extra information.  

I jumped in my class' sandbox and chose to color some of the font into a nice lime green tint.  I would have to pat myself on the back for this.  You must understand, I despise lime green, and even more than that, I despise wikis.  I have found that they are great for IDEAS but not for factual information that is able to be used with any authority for my work in writing.  I know that they are fun and offer many new thoughts that can be productive and thought provoking, but I just can't get into them.  

On the Flip Side,

I do see where these pages have come into play with the world of education.  Book reviews will always hold bias and that bias is an important factor in the way someone may react to a book.  By using these for schools and for colleges, alike, we are beginning to move forward into a world of wikis that hold information that is useful to someone on a more personal level.  I thoroughly enjoyed looking around on the "BookLoversWiki" and I find that much of the information shared is clearly used as a personal opinion.  This is the meaty material that wikis can provide.  Personality.  

By using this in a classroom, students will be able to use their input and bias in a constructive way.  By looking at others' comments and reviews, thoughts can be changed, but as long as it is a group activity that includes the entire class, it is doing its job as a wiki.

Thing #14

Shakespeare is in "Titanic?"

     A Flowchart is something that has become removed from the classroom, substituted by instructions and PowerPoints for creative youngsters to follow instruction, instead of instructing their own minds.  By looking around with some of the fun generators, and making use of some of the available designs that have been pre-built in side of the following sites, I have found that this method of instruction is still a way to organize ideas that may be scratched into a piece of paper.  It's important to know that there are minds that aren't able to organize themselves, SO HELP THEM OUT!!!

Gliffy

     Gliffy is the site used to make the above flowchart/mind map, and is a great way for students to express their rhetoric with topics.  By having both sides of the story laid out, it becomes much easier to see the entire picture of the idea.  These help!  In writing, one must be aware of all sides of an argument, therefore, to maximize the use of writing one must acknowledge the opposing views with confidence and poise.  Enter the Flow Chart.

Mindmeister

     Another thing to consider is the brainstorming that must take place before writing and formulating organized thoughts.  One way to do this is by Mind Mapping.  This often ends up looking like a cluster of aphorisms that amount to nothing, but I would like to argue that this is one of the best ways to get all of the thoughts onto paper quick.  Now we have sites like Mindmeister that have already laid out an outline of lines and bubbles that can be added quickly and typed in order to think faster, and save some time.  Print it out!  It can always be changed, but a mind map is an efficient way to lay down what needs to be laid down.

Use these sites and let me know what you think.  Your comments are always welcomed, even if negative.  Your input allows me to be useful to YOU.

Thing #13

ZOHO

You can posts blogs from an online word/writer app that allows you to be more technically efficient with all of your postings.  I recently explored the extremely easy to navigate zoho.com and found that sharing a document online isn't as hard as I imagined it to be.  We can all use this.

Often times is find myself reviewing online documents as saved versions of a document, opposed to a PDF file that must download to my computer.  I realize that I have been waiting my computers memory on things that should just be viewed online in the first place.  The great part about zoho is that any one, given the permission, may view and edit the document that is being shared.  I can make notes on the page, edit small errors for friends, or even just save the document to a compatible version to my computer with the ability to edit it in the future.

Why is this a good thing?  This is good because it allows people to work on things together.  Why should a group project be reliant on one soul person?  Now you don't have to argue about who, in your group, is going to type up all of the information/Data.  THE LONG DEBATE IS OVER!!!  No more arguing about who is doing all the tedious work.

Zoho also allows for comments to be made outside of the document, truly making it a web 2.0 application.  By allowing others to interact and comment on the work posted, zoho has built a program that communicates collaboration.

The Final Plus

Post directly to your BLOG!!!  Use this to be a more precise and accurate writer, technically.  It has a much more "Feature Rich" word processor that will auto check any of your spellings in more than 75 different languages.  So Go ahead, post a blog in Spanish.  At least, you will know that you spelled the words correctly.