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.