Picnik

I love using Picnik! Even though I was familiar with this online tool prior to the presentation in class, I never used it until I took this course. I stumbled upon it while trying to edit photos that I uploaded to my google account, the same way I began using picasa. Since then, I have spent far too much time exploring all of the different things you can do to photos. I used picnik to edit all of the screen shots used in the prezi that Whitaker and I created as an artifact for our Web 2.0 project. Using picnik makes me happy; I just love to read the little things it says while the site loads, like "sprinkling dew" and "stealing picnik baskets." It also makes me happy that I do not have to create an account to use it. All the user names and passwords I have created for this class are really annoying! It wasn't so bad at first, but now the list is getting a little too long. Oh well.

Glogging???

Ok, so the glogster website says stop blogging and start glogging. I really don't see how the two are similar. Glogster seems like a great tool to display information, but it is probably not the best online tool to exchange information, as blogs do. 

Glogs are great for creatively displaying classroom rules, but I think it would be really great if they could be printed out as a poster that could be displayed in the classroom. I think it is most useful for students to use to create about me pages, book reports, or other projects that have traditionally been done using poster boards. Its a very green approach to creating posters. On the other hand, I don't like how they try to upsell their products. For example, while I was creating a glog and I tried to use a certain tool from the magnet tool and most of the tools listed are not available with the free account. This is disturbing. If students are using this, they do not need to be distracted by all the things they could do if they were to upgrade to a premium account.

Lesson Planning

It is obviously very important for teachers to plan their lessons and be prepared for class each day. I just find it more difficult to plan for high school math classes. Most people have had pretty much the same experiences with high school math classes. You usually go to class and take notes. It is more difficult for us math people to do really engaging things in our classrooms because we have not seen this first hand. I hope that the internship year will expose me to some really great teachings styles and activities that stray from the norm. I am also looking forward to learning more about the online resources available for high school math teachers. Working on the lesson plan, it was difficult for me to think of accommodations that could be made. I look forward to talking to teachers about the things that they do in their classes to accommodate the needs of students with disabilities. As this is my first semester taking any education classes, and I am taking four this semester, it is difficult for me to have answers to "what would you do in your classroom" questions. It is a little scary because I will be teaching very soon, and I have spent so much of my college career in classes that had nothing to do with education. I still have a strong passion for teaching and I look forward to learning ways to improve my lesson plans so that I can become the awesome, prepared teacher that I have always wanted to be.

Twitter

I enjoyed the informative presentation on twitter, but I doubt I will use twitter in my classroom. I am not a big fan of it. Just they whole concept behind twitter is kind of stupid to me. Why would I want to announce my every move on the internet. Some people might think that's a great idea, but I like my privacy and I am pretty secretive. Plus I'm not very popular obviously; since I joined a week ago, I have two followers. How lame! Depending on the make-up of my class, I may end up using twitter for reminding or announcing things to my students. But there will probably be many more social networking sites by then, and Twitter will be as outdated then as MySpace is now.

Wordle

Wordle is a pretty neat tool. I used it to see what words I use most in my blogs. I think it is a great way for people to create collages of what their interests are with words, sort of like an option for an "all about me" exercise. I created a wordle filled with words that described who I am, what I am, what I like, and what I look like. This was fun.
However, it should be easier for the user to save the images they create with wordle to their computer. You can't just copy and paste them, so I don't really know how they expect people to use them other than by taking screen shots. I also don't like the way the gallery is setup. There are millions of wordles created like every week, and since they are listed in chronological order it is extremely annoying when you are looking for a particular wordle. I hope the creators of wordle.net will make a few adjustments so this tool would be more user-friendly.

WebQuests

I don't remember doing anything like this when I was in school, but it seems pretty neat. Is the main purpose to get students more engaged in the material or to get students to explore technology? I could definitely use WebQuests to relate math to realistic situations. This is a great way to engage students that don't really like math. However, I can see how time consuming developing and utilizing WebQuests may be. And it takes a lot of creativity to develop a WebQuest that is fun, interactive, and follows the standards of the curriculum. This teaching tool could be used as an end of unit project that ties together the main ideas. I saw a lot of WebQuest that didn't seem very effective, so I am not sure if it is worth all of the time and effort that some people put into them. I don't think I would like to make one from scratch.

Awesome Findings

As I was working on my presentation on prezi, I decided I would use screen shots and I uploaded them to google so I could edit them (since I have very little knowledge on how to do this using Mac). So when I clicked edit, it redirected me to picnik. I was so surprised and excited!!!! I think it is cool how I was using something new on accident. Once I started playing around with it, I found they have a lot of neat things you can do to photos. I had to try this at home!!! When I got home, I spent a good hour just checking out the various features of picnik and I used it to create a beautiful profile picture for facebook. I look forward to using this site A LOT in the future because it is just that AWESOME!!!!