Thing #18

I have both Twitter and Facebook accounts. I never use Twitter as I did not like it much. I have been using facebook for several years now and love the fact that it allows me to keep up with all of my military buddies, college buddies, friends and family. I would be wary however about using social networking in school. There are alot of weirdos on many of htese social networks that students, nor anyone else for that matter, need ot communicate with. In my opinion, Social networks should be left out of the school system. My facebook page is under the name James Richardson.

Thing #17

I am not much of a fan of Delicious. I am confident that between Google, Flickr, and YouTube, and BlogSpot, I can find and do most of what I would need to in a classroom. After exploring Delicious, I felt that is was just a more complex source. I loath being attatched to a computer and I feel that is where I am heading. I am not saying at all that Delicious is a bad source. In fact, it is an excellent one, and I would recommend it; however, its just a bit too much for me. I like my basic Google and YouTube. The one aspect about Delicious that I do find useful is the ability to tag, thus making it easier for your students to find something you may want them to look at.

Thing #16

As usual, I am sticking with iGoogle. I like Google, I've used Google for a long time, and it's always been reliable. I am a big fan if the saying "If it aint broke, don't fix it...". Google works fine. I'm sticking to my guns. After this class, I will probably not use iGoogle anymore. I am proficient with computers but I do not like relying on them. I do not wish to spen my entire teachign career with my face planted on a computer screen. The online calenders are useful if you spend alot of time online, however, the calender hanging on my wall serves me just fine. I have one on my phone as well. I try not to rely on the internet. The same applies to the to-do lists. I am perfectly fine keeping mine on my phone or jotted on a piece of paper but if you are a person who spends alot of time online, I can see how an online to-do list could be very helpful. As for the tools, the PDF converter is neat. I can definately see myself getting alot of use out of that program. With that I can take pretty much anything and make it readable.

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• Did you find a tool that has some uses for you at the school or at home? Which tool(s) would you recommend to others?

Thing #15

Wiki seems to me like another version of blogging. The only differance is that anyone in the group can sign in and  add, subtract, or edit the blog. If you are confidant enough in your class I could see this as a useful tool that students could use to post new learnings and ideas on their current lesson. I found wiki easy to use and I don't beliee student would have muchof a problem utilizing it either. My edit to the APSU sandbox is posted under the name JDs Thing 7.

Thing #14

I have to say, I like the Mind Map more. The program in my opinion is more user friendly and I loath overly complicated stuff. I feel that the simplicity and clarity of the Bubbl.us mind maps is effective as well as easy to use. The Gliffy flow chart program made me want to throw something at my computer. lol.

<iframe src="http://bubbl.us/view/13ad34/253f36/12haCxCth3nSQ/" width="600" height="400"></iframe>

Thing #13

Honestly, I am going to have to side with Google, as I have used Google for a long time and frankly, it's more familiar. I will say however that Zoho isn't bad. I like the calender tool and how it lets you drag events to new areas without having to delete and recreate events. I feel that there are better programs to use for drawing and spreadsheets, but I would probably do something utilizing the calender with my students.
https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1wctJL_6VOygQtjQsPp2pNE3kCdcGZZTGQq0yCk22p8s/edit

Thing #12

I have always been a fan of Google Translate and have actually found myself up staying up late losing track of the time playing with it. It is easy to use and very fun in my opinion. Being an aspiring history teacher, I am sure I could find tons of usage for this tool in my classroom. Useing Google Translate I was able to translate from English to Spanish a greeting to my future class:

English - Good morning class. My name is Mr. Richardson. I will be your History teacher for this semester.

Spanish - Clase Buenos días. Mi nombre es Sr. Richardson. Yo seré su profesor de Historia para este semestre.

The Link for Google Translate is http://translate.google.com/.

The second tool I decided to try was Google Calender which I also found quite helpful. I can not only keep track of everything I have going on in my hectic life with it, but I can program exactly when I want my alerts sent to me. I can choose to have them sent via email, cell phone or both and I can set them both to alert me at different times. I have my email set to alert me seven days prior to a date on my calender and I have my phone set to alert me one day prior to an event. The link for Google Calender is https://www.google.com/calendar/.