January 28, 2012

What did we do this week that you can apply in your school or job and how might you use it?

This week we did several things that I will use not only in my professional life, but in my personal life as well. I have to say that I wasn't totally sold on RSS feeds after reading the chapter in the book, but once I actually created an account and started subscribing to feeds my feelings changed. I think they are fabulous. I was able to set up feed for my professional use and I set up some feeds for my personal use. It is my goal to look at them daily so that I can benefit from the information that I'm receiving. I like the fact that I can be logged in to one site to find information that can help me, and yes I can see how time will be saved. I plan on sharing this with my staff when we do a technology sharing day. I don't think many people are familiar with it, but I think many staff members would find it useful.

I also found the tutorial on google sites interesting and actually started setting up site. It was very easy to do and I thought I may make a library site where I can include help sheets and tips for students, so that they always have access to help if they need it.

The photo sharing was really fun. I have had a Shutterfly account for years, but I have never used the share feature. I found that creating a website to share was very easy and it looks really nice. I am able to share not only my photos, but videos, and photo books that I have made. It also has a blogging feature that I thought was neat and a calendar. I will continue to use this with my family and I have thought of how I could use it at work. I've have embedded a couple of photos on this blog as well. One of the ideas I had was to create a Battle of the Books website. As the students go through the process we take pictures and video, so this would be a neat place to post those as well as have the students blog their experience. Overall, I found this week very helpful and I've learned about a lot of new tools that I can use.

January 21, 2012

What did we do this week that you can apply in your school or job and how might you use it?

There were several things that we did this week that I can apply to my job. First of all I think it was helpful to learn more about social networking and how it may not be as bad for schools to use as most people think. The reason this was helpful is because this will most likely come up in the near future and I feel that I have a better idea of the advantages that social networking in schools can offer. I also think that setting up a Twitter account can help me in my job. I am following WEMTA as well as a few others that have sent information about Web 2.0 tools. A few of the tweets have given me information that I can use in my library and share with other teachers, so I think the Twitter account will be helpful in finding new technology information, and hopefully, I'll be able to share some information with others as well. Another helpful topic was the video we watched about Wiki's. This video was so helpful because it was very clear in explaining what a wiki is. I think this video will help me show teachers in my building what a wiki is. I have had several teachers ask me what a wiki is and I think this video does a better job than anything I have seen before. I think the video could also be shown to my students prior to starting a wiki in class.

January 14, 2011

What did we do this week that you can apply in your school or job and how might you use it?

This week I found so many different things useful I don't know where to begin. I really enjoyed reading the different articles that focused on Edublogs. I found myself spending a great deal of time viewing and reading different Edublogs. This is something that I really haven't done in the past because I just don't have time, so I'm glad that it was an assignment because it made me do this. I feel that because I took the time to find different blogs that I can use I will now be able to go back to them over and over again. I may even try to work in to my week a specific time that I set aside to review blogs. I put aside time for exercise, reading, family time, etc. I should be able to set aside time for educational blog reading as well. My favorite blog that I have found is http://theunquietlibrarian.wordpress.com/. I found so many of her post relevant to what I do on the job.

I also enjoyed looking at the best free web 2.0 because these are always changing and the teachers in my building are always looking for something new to incorporate into the lesson plans. I saw that some of my favorites were on the list, such as prezi, wordle, skype, Moodle, and Sweet Search. But it was great to see new tools. Gnowlege a test generator was a new tool to me, as well as ClassConnect where students can upload their work to share. Embedit.in also caught my eye because this seemed like a great tool when sharing documents. All of the sites that I was able to have access to will help me in job, so this week a great deal of what we did for class will be beneficial in my job.