Thing #12

I love all the things that you can do with Google.  They are so useful and there are so many of them!  Google alerts is so neat, you can set up to be notified whenever there is news in the field that you are interested in, or just for anything in general.  Google calendars keeps you on schedule and lets you update what you are doing.  My Google calendar is not all set up yet, but I have started.  Many of these tools are helpful for the classroom.  You can create a calendar of what will be going on in the classroom and share them with your students and parents.  Alerts can be set up for news about new classroom methods, technology, etc.  Google is not just a search engine.  There is so much more to explore.

Thing #11

I thought that the Google blogs search engine was really easy to use.  You could just type in what you were looking for and find a number of blogs dedicated to that topic.  Technorati was also really interesting because you could find blogs or individual posts on a site/blog that matched what you were looking for.  Topix was a little confusing just because it started based on your location and the site looked too busy for me.  I found a few interesting feeds about elementary education, but not really anything better than the ones I have found previously (Cool Cat, etc.).  Of course, if you find a cool site on your own, you could just look for a RSS button on that site.

Thing #10

RSS Feeds and newsreaders are interesting and convienient, but I, personally, would rather check a site itself.  However, that is just me because I like to browse the internet and I am more likely to go to the website itself than log into my Google account.  But, I do see the value in them.  You can get updates from a variety of sites all in one place.  In the classroom, this could be helpful in getting up to date news about new classroom tech, methods, and more.  If you were in the classroom and were trying to show a variety of sites or blogs to your class, you could go to one place to get all the information you need.  You would not have to log in and out of a variety of sites or have to open a bunch of tabs and bookmarks.

Thing #9

I thought that the image generators were interesting. For my first image I used the Comic Strip Generator.  I browsed through the images that they had available until I found one I liked (Spider-man, I love comic books!), then added my own text.  It was really easy.

For my second photo I used Image Chef and their photo frame application.  I uploaded a photo (of myself and the kids that I babysit).  It was also an easy tool to use.

The image generators can be used many ways in the classroom.  They can be used to display images of you and your class.  The comic strip generator can be used to make a message for your class in a fun and exciting way.  Personally, you could use them just for fun and create fun and interesting photos.

Thing #8

The Flickr mashups were all really neat, but I liked Spell with flickr the best.  I think that it is really cool and I love all the different photos available for each letter.  These mashups could be used many different ways in the classroom.  They could be used for lessons on the alphabet and spelling (Spell), for geography (Mappr), time (Clockr), and colors (Flickr Color Pickr).  Sharing pictures online is great, but it needs to done safely.  With the use of privacy settings, you can share picutres with friends, family, colleagues, and the classroom and be at ease over who sees what.

Thing #7 (picture used: Precious Broadway)

Precious Broadway, a photo by Sprengben [why not get a friend] on Flickr.

I really enjoyed learning how to use Flickr. It was really cool to see different people's pictures. Even though I am not a great photographer, I do love photography. The use of tags on Flickr also makes it so easy to find any photo that is relevant to your interests. The photo that I chose to share of Broadway in New York. I am a huge musical theatre fan. It has been a passion of mine for quite some time now. It is a dream of mine to go to New York to see a live show.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sprengben/5438672701/