One last thing! Is the the end of my blog?

What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
If I had to choose, I would have to go with animoto.  I really enjoyed making the video and adding music.  Mine came together perfect.  I used our beach vacation photos and added some surfer music. 
I also like google earth.  It was incredible.  The things that you can do and see is amazing.  I also liked groove shark.  I like choosing songs and being able to add them to your blog.


How has this program affected your lifelong learning goals?
This program has shown me that there is a lot of programs on the web that can assist you in your personal and private life.  I learned that you can put everything you like in one place so there will be no more checking a bunch of sites.  I will use the programs that I have learned here, but I think the main thing that I have learned is that when I have to do something to search the web for an easier way.
What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?
I would not do anything differently.  If a web-challenged person like my self could follow, complete, and take things from this program for future use, anyone can.
How will what you have learned influence your practice as a teacher?
I will be starting a blog that i will use for my classroom.  I will have each of my students start a blog as well.  They will do some of their assignments on this blog.  I would like for it to have an web poster board like glogster.  http://www.glogster.com/
I will also start a personal blog to put out some of the opinions I have.  I would like to use it to help young men who are trying to find their way in life. 

How do you plan to keep up with new developments in web 2.0? Recommend a way that you have found to be useful.
I will check some of the shared programs like diigo http://www.diigo.com/ to see what other people are using.  I will use some of the groups that I found during this exercises like the US History teachers.  I will join them and stay posted on whats new.  I will also follow Dr. Lucks blogs/groups.  He is always finding something new.

Thing #23

One of the first things I noticed in my search for the "23 things" was that it is used by a lot of schools. I did discover that Helene Blowers in order to encourage learning and exploration, set up “23 things”—small web-based exercises to expand her staff's knowledge of Web 2.0 (plcmcl2-things.blogspot.com). Each member of her staff who completed all 23 within a certain amount of time received an MP3 player and qualified for a drawing for a laptop and other prizes.

I would use creative commons to give the original authors credit for their work. In the past I would use a picture or a article without crediting the original source. Since I am a history teacher, I will use articles from other historians and modify them to meet the needs of my class. I will also show my class the videos on creative commons.

Thing #22

Hello,  Today I listened to podcasts.  I went to EPN (The Educational Podcast Network) http://epnweb.org/index.php?request_id=445&openpod=11#anchor11.  I then went to the Subject Specific Podcasts section and clicked on Social Studies.  I found some interesting things, the first one I checked was the First Amendment Minute.  It is a podcast that tells about Supreme Court cases that involve Freedom of Speech. http://epnweb.org/player.php?podshow=http://www.firstamendmentminute.com/Podcasts/FAM_2007-10-01_Truth_or_Consequences.mp3&podcast=First Amendment Minute&program=Truth or Consequences

I don't think that this podcast would appeal to everyone, but it would appeal to Us History teachers and fans of History.  It could be used in classrooms to educate students on real court cases.  They would hear real court cases and real decisions and the reasons for these decisions. 

I also went to Podcastdirectory http://podcastdirectory.com/ and I noticed that they had a lot more categories.  They had art, music, culture, and comedy.  They have education as well, but it is not a focus of this site.  If I followed a podcast it would be this one because of its diversity. 
Both of these sites were easy to use.

Thing #21

I was really excited about this one, it looked fun right off the bat.  I could not wait to share this on with family and I have not even started making it yet  It strarts off by picking a theme.  Then you upload your pictures or use theirs.  I chose some pictures from our Ocean City, MD vacation.  I uploaded 12 pictures and then I had to choose some music.  I was going to use my own music until i read that you had to have the rights to it.  So to avoid the hastle I just decided to use one of theirs.  I tried to find something "beachy"  It was hard to find something, but I did manage to find a surfer song.  It turned out pretty good.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Thing #20

     I have been using Youtube for a little while now.  It is perfect for history/government teachers because of the amount of historical footage that they have.  I had a Civil Rights project this year and youtube had the Bull Conner speech and footage of the march which drew the ire of the world.  I like the fact that you can easily get the video embeded code just by clicking on the embed button.  If you are collecting videos for a project due now or for future use, you can either put it in a temporary quene, or for long term placement in a play list.
     I chose this video because of its historical signifigance.  This speech was the pivotal moment in the career of Martin Luther King Jr and the pivitol momeent in the Civil Rights movement.

Thing #19

     Well the first thing that I did was join Ning teacherpop.  It said I would have to be approved by the administrator.  The first thing I saw when it opened was one of my classmates from my 5540 class, so I decided to leave her a comment.  Then I discovered that I could not leave a comment until I was approved.  No worries, I will just move on to the next exercise. 
     I am a big movie buff so I tried flixter.  http://www.flixter.com/  It is interesting because you can set up where you can veiw movies that are now playing.  You can set up a theater that is closest to you.  You can see new movie and DVD releases. It also has some cool quizzes, I took the superhero quiz.  I also joined in on a forum.  I will definitely use this to track movies I want to see.


I have just been approved for teacherpop.  I left a comment for my classmate Jennifer.  I also got my badge.  I also uploaded a picture.
Visit TeacherPop

Things #18

I have had a facebook account for a little while now. http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1528141966   I never had a myspace account because I am a very private person and I am very skeptical of people having that much access to me.  I decided to get a facebook page under the urging of my friends just to stay in touch with them.  I have to admit that facebook does get you in touch with people who you may have lost contact with.  I have reconnected with a lot of people I went to high school with.  I like that feature of how you can find friends and you can comment on their status.  Every time someone makes a comment on your status you get an email or you can get an alert on your phone. 
   I feel like teachers should know about the dangers of social websites.  They should be careful about pictures and statements that they post.  Because if those posts are deemed improper, they could be fired.  Teachers should also be leery of accepting friend requests from their students.  This could lead to relationships being viewed as improper.  I do not think that a teacher should use a facebook/myspace account for educational use, because of all the potential dangers.  I think that teachers should use educational social networks where only the students, teachers, and parents have access.  I have enclosed a link of some of those sites.     http://www.educationalnetworking.com/List+of+Networks

Thing #17

I looked around on the 23 things and I found some interesting sites and I also read some of the comments.  I felt like I would understand it better if I set it up for myself.  So I set it up and imported bookmarks that were previously on my computer.  Once I did that I started searching delicious for history bookmarks and I found an excellent historical picture site.  This site has been saved over 11,000 times.  I searched the comments and I found that there were a lot of history teachers that were sharing this site.  Some of the tags that were used were history, images, and teaching.   I included a picture of the Apollo 11 moonwalk from the Life site. http://images.google.com/hosted/life    I think that this would be a good thing for teachers because they could bookmark popular sites so they could always reference them.  Another way this could be useful for teachers is the social networking aspect.  A teacher could check the bookmarks of other teachers/researchers and use those sites in their classrooms.

Thing #16

     I tried both of the start pages, igoogle and pageflakes. I must admit that I liked pageflakes better.  I think it was easier to load RSS feeds and pageflakes had better gadgets.  I also liked the look of it.  I will probably use pageflakes as my home page if I can get it to work properly. 
     I set up the google calendar a little while ago.  I think it can be used in classrooms if you made it public for students and parents.  You could put assignment due dates, important historical dates, and when report cards are due.  You could put Parent-Teacher conference dates and set up automatic emails to parents to keep them informed of everything. 
I used the online to do list "ta da list". tadalist.com  It was incredibly simple.  You just name a list and then add items to it.  You can share your list or have it emailed to you.  It would be better if it sent alerts to your phone. 
     I also tried Joe's Goals. Joe'sgoals.com  It was different from the other sites because it allowed you to set goals and prioritize them with grades and animations.  This could be used for setting personal goals as well as classroom goals.  Such as high test scores, book reading, and student individual goals.    

Thing #15

     When I got to the APSU site it looked like fun and I could not wait to add something.  It sort of like immortalizing yourself except someone can edit you.  I was a little disappointed to discover I had to create another account.  It seems like I have created 1000 accounts.  However,  really wanted to add something so I created yet again.  It took me a few minutes to figure out how to edit but once I did, I edited someone who had used a mind map.  She had a mind map that was school related and mine was a personal use mind map.  That way people get of example of both uses.  It also makes me wonder about wiki's.  Someone could go in and edit and add incorrect information.  I am a history major and since I have edited APSU's wiki, I am going to add something to one of the historic entrees on wikipedia. 

Thing # 14

     I must admit that I didn't understand the mind map at first. In order to better understand it I decided to try something that came easy to me. I chose to use our summer vacation. I tried bubbl.us and it does help you organize your ideas. You just type a main idea into a bubble and then type subsequent ideas into a child bubble. You can also connect two bubbles with a directional line. I like the color feature. When you change the main bubble all the subsequent bubbles change to a different color and their child bubbles change as well.
     The next thing I tried was gliffy.  I have had more experienced with flow charts.  When I was in the Army, we used them for phone rosters and various classes.  For this one I chose a flow chart for the three branches of Government.  It was very easy.  They have a large group of shapes to choose from and a wide range of colors to decorate them.  You can color the background as well.  This would be very useful for making charts diagramming things like how a bill becomes a law or duties of the Vice President. 

Thing #13

I am trying out this Zoho and so far it seems a lot like ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Microsoft word. I do like the fact that you no longer need to have the latest upgrade in word to type a document. I was checking the features to see if there were any differences between the two and the first thing I discovered was that Zoho does not have as many font selections. However it does seem to have a lot more features in the tabs. For instance in the review tab has a "find and replace" feature that will find a word from your document and replace it with another word of your choosing. The insert tab has equations, table of contents, and watermarks. You can also publish documents, post them to a blog, and digitally sign things. You can insert local style sheets from your computer. It seems a lot like Word only better. It seems a lot easier to use than Microsoft Word.

Thing #12

Google has some great products. It is interesting because I was looking for a calendar to give me updates and schedule things. Believe it or not I still write things on the caledar on my wall. I set up google calendar and I liked it. I like the fact that I could recieve the alerts on my phone. I programed some appointments that I have for this week in there already and I am hoping that this works out great for me. I also tried google alerts. I put in the Miami Heat and I must admit that I got a lot more information than I thought I was going to get. I got current scores, the official website, youtube videos, and even other blogs. I set it up to receive them once a day so I am interested in what is going to be in the alert tomorrow.

Thing #11

Which method of finding feeds did you find easiest to use? I found the Syndic8 website the easiest to use for finding feeds. All I did was type in a word and multiple feeds were at my disposal. *Which Search tool was the easiest for you? I found them all easy. There wasn't anything difficult about any of them. They were simple, either type in a city or a key word and instantly you are right there. *which was more confusing? I would not say that either of the sites was confusing. If I did have to say something negative it would be the vagueness of the google site. It took me a couple of keywords and a little revising of those keywords to get exactly what I wanted. *what kind of useful feeds did you find in your travels? I found an extremely useful feed while using the google search bar called the US History Teacher's blog. It had a you tube video of a Malcolm X speech, a classzone map which could be viewed on a LCD screen, a recently donated collection of never seen before Civil War Pictures. It even had links to other History Teacher's websites.

Thing # 10

The thing that most impressed me about RSS feeds and news readers was the way with one simple click a lot of knowledge is brought to you. It would take a lot of time to research all that information, but Google Reader consolidated it and put it in an easy to reach location. I have all the news and sports information that I can handle. I also like it for keeping up with blogs. I have a lot of interests so I would set one up to follow all of my blogs that I would like to veiw on my personal time. I would also set up one so that I could converse with other teachers and stay up to date on the latest information. I would also make one that was accessable to students and parents. Parents would be able to keep up with what's going on with their child's education and students could use it to keep track of all the information they are given on a daily basis.

Thing #4

Commenting on a particular post may fire up other like minded individuals to make a comment. A healthy number of passionate comments can validate the blogger's opinion thus giving him the confidence to write more about the topic. Positive or even negative comments can steer a blogger into areas that you want them to focus on. If a blogger has an opinion that you agree with when you make a comment you can use something from your life experieces to strengthen it. I chose David Kennedy because he used an image gererator to put his face on Superman's body. Superman is one of favorite comic book characters. I chose Jake Peterson's blog because we are both baseball fans. I chose Goeun Kang because we are doing a class project together. I chose Akenese Atonio-Figueroa's blog because of her veiws on No Child left Behind. I chose Damaris Last because she was the "last" of the 5.

Thing #2

The first name I decided to use was my nickname blaqrob2, as the name for my post. It is the name I use for everything. I have been using the name "blaqrob2" for years. My wife has been trying to get me to change it. She feels that it is not very professional. She is right, it is time for me to choose something that says professionalism. Then one day in class Dr. Luck said that our blogs should contain our names so I got rid of blaqrob2 and just used my government name. I need to come up with something with more pizzzaz. My experience with creating a blog was eye opening. I didn't know it was so easy. I didn't know that there were so many sites that allow you to make your own blog. I have been reading sports blogs and etc for a while and I thought that the owners of those blogs went through a difficult process which probably involved payment. I will definetly continue to have a blog after the completion of this class. My avatar is a relection of me. It looks like me. It is important to me that the image that you see on my page represents me. My blogs has all of my veiws and my personal opinions and when you see my avatar I want you to visualise that he is talking to you.

Thing #1

I just veiwed the "7 habits" tutorial and I discovered that I have been following a few of the steps already. For instance I have been following "habit #1" for a number of years. I began setting goals with the end in mind for about ten years. It started once I bought one of those self help books. I also identify with "habit #2". I frequently read "how to" books. I also particpate in group discussions. Something I would need to work on however is asking questions. I generally don't ask questions and try to figure the answer out myself. Sometimes I figure it out and sometimes I don't. That is definetly something I need to work on. I also need to start veiwing life's problems as chalenges as mentioned in "habit #3". I do it sometimes, but i need to start doing it all the time. I don't let problems get me down, but I need to start seeing them in a different light.

Thing #3

I would definitely use a blog in my future classroom. Most of the kids are on the internet blog sites all the time anyway. After reading Anne Davis' EudoBlog Insight's I would definitely start a class blog. I would use it as she suggested to post class-related information. I would post homework assignments, examples of classwork, and historical information. I would post "this day in history" quotes and links to various history sites. I would make it parent friendly. Parents would be able to check their children's grades, check to see what they have going on in class and what they have for home work.

Thing #8

For this assignment I used Spell with Flickr. It was very simple. You just spell the word and they provide you with a plethora of letters from Flickr. You just click on the letters and they change until you pick the ones that you like. This can be used for labeling things at home or in the classroom. It can be used as headings for book reports or titles for stories. http://metaatem.net/words/History

Thing #9

For this assignment I first went with photofunia. I had the oppurtunity to make myself a superhero. Being a huge science fiction fan I chose to make my self a Jedi. I think that this could be used in the class rooms for projects. A student could create a picture of himself in a particular time period and report on it. I would use it for personal use for wall papers and signs. www.photofunia.com The next one I tried was fototrix. I know a lot of young men like wrestling so a chose Batista. If he told me to turn in my homework, I would not hesitate. This site had a lot of images to choose from and you could choose from multible fonts. It was very easy to use. I think it could be used in schools for signs and reminders. www.fototrix.com

Thing #7

For this assignment I chose option #2. The photo that I uploaded was a shot of the St. Louis Arch taken from inside the car on our way into the city for family vacation. Everyone was asleep until they heard someone say something about the Arch, then they sprang up.
I found Flickr to be a very interesting program. It was very easy to use. The step by step tutorial was very helpful. I would probably use Flickr more for personal use to share photos with friends and family. I like the way that you can send pictures to Facebook or other sites or even send them to your blog. I love to go to new places so I will try to master the "map out your vacation" feature. That way I can share them with family and the kids can see exactly where we were. I could'nt master the feature because I spent a lot of time looking through the galleries. My favorites were the "Portraits" and the "still life".
As far as using Flickr in schools and libraries the "Current Events"
to veiw the official NASA Goddard Space Flight Center or the White House photostream. This is the one that interests me because I plan to teach History. The "places" feature would be helpful also because I could show students the exact places we are discussing.

St. Louis Vacation

This picture was taken while I was driving.

No Excuses!

President Obama's Inaugural Address carries immense historical significance and provides an incredible amount of inspiration.  It also removes excuses for being unsuccessful.   Obama becoming President shows that anything is possible.  You can no longer make excuses for not succeeding if you are a person of color or otherwise.  Yes, you will run into obstacles.  Yes, there are "good ol' boy" systems that are firmly in place.  Yes there are still walls that have to be knocked down.  However, a black man holds the highest position in the land.  He had to fight through obstacles that you could not conceive.  So look to him as your example and fight on.  No excuses! 

Thing #5

We all must adapt to change.  I am a lover of music and I remember when music was changing due to the internet.  People were sharing music files instead of buying CD's and instead of the big music companies adapting, they tried to fight the change.  They sued the websites that shared the music, they sued the people who downloaded the music, they changed the CD's to prevent them from being downloaded, but none of this stopped the change.  They lost millions of dollars because they refused to adapt.
     Now education is changing.  It is changing from books, pencils, and chalkboards, to social networking, blogs, and wikis.  We as educators must change with it.  Education will no longer be bound to the schools.  It will expand to homes, libraries, or even your local Barnes and Noble because of Web 2.0. My only concern is for those students who do not have access to the internet once they leave the school.  I have children and I see everyday how they depend on the internet.  I have also visited some of the web 2.0 web sites and they are amazing and informal.  In just a few clicks you have acess to endless information.  You can provide students with imagery they could not get from a book.  As long as we can provide a way for everyone to receive this information I am on board.  

     I have already experienced video conferencing and distance learning.  Video conferencing can be effective because of one teacher can teach a variety of locations.  This works well also if you have a speaker who can only be in one location, but from that one location he can touch many lives.  Distance learning is also effective because it gives you the freedom to work from a variety of locations.  A person who may not have the time to sit in a traditional classroom can still get a quality education.  With both of these the only drawback is that you loose the personal touch.

Thing #6

The site that I decided to check out was Google Earth. (google.earth.com)  This website allows a veiwer to find and explore almost any location on Earth or beyond.  All a veiwer has to do is enter a name, landmark, zipcode or any other means to identify a location into the "fly to" box.  I was able to explore the tops of skyscrapers as well as the floors of oceans.  It has many incredibly interesting features.  For instance if you are exploring a particular place and you would like to see how it would look at noon you can click the sun icon and it will add time appropriate sunlight and shadows.  Clicking the North icon allows you to scan 360 degrees of your current veiw and everything you explore can be seen in 3D. 
     Google Earth would be excellent in a school or library setting.  A science teacher discusing the Moon could show her class it's surface.  Social Studies students could explore the entire Great Wall of China.  The uses for Google Earth in schools is limitless.