"One Last Thing"

My favorite discoveries of this assignment was Animoto, Podcast Directory.Com, Zoho Writer, Delicious and iGoogle. This project has really improved my lifelong learning goals because of all the new programs out there that make life easier and fun. The only thing that I have to complain about is the amount of work and time that is involved to do all the assignments that is required during this course. There are a lot of non-traditional students that work and have families which makes it hard to do all that is required. I am very lucky to have a boss that is my relative who is very lenient with my schedule and a wife and kids who had to put up with me never having time for them, plus me being stressed out and angry all the time. I hate to be negative, but it almost wasn't worth it. On the other side of the coin I feel very informed and more knowledgeable towards all the new technology. This was kind of like a math class for me. I hated it while I was in it, but walked away feeling good about what I had learned. Dr. Wall was terrific as an instructor and am thankful I had her as a professor. I think students in this program learn a lot, but that the quality is not as good because the information is rushed through. I know that the argument for the rush is that it is a five week course so it is necessary to still get all the requirements inside since you are getting three credit hours of what normally takes around sixteen weeks, but I still see a little bit of give in that area. That is my opinion and you know what they say about those. So anyway, the way for me to continue to keep updated with Web 2.0 tools is to take a little time each month to devote to using them which I plan to hopefully do.

Thing #23

APSU 23 Things is based on Stephen Abram's article titled "43 Things I (or You) might want to do this year that allows you to track or make personal goals. Now that I have discovered the Creative Commons website I will use it for all the work that I create so all can share if they find it useful in any way.

Thing #22

I listened to and subscribed to The Naked Scientist podcast because they have interesting discussions. I listened to "Your Bacterial Body" and found PodcastDirectory.Com to be the easiest to use. I also subscribed to "Absolute Science" and hope to listen to these when I graduate or have a break from all the work I am doing in my classes.

Thing #21

I created a video of my some of my favorite pictures. I had fun creating this and found it very useful for future projects. I think that students would love to create their own short clip for a special gift for their parents or use in a school project while at the same time enhancing their computer skills.

Thing #20

I went to YouTube and watched the Democracy Video Challenge. I thought is was inspiring and very uplifting. I chose this because wanting everyone to be treated equal with equal opportunities and wanting peace and love to blow around as freely as the wind is on my mind most of the time. I liked the site and had never really visited it before. I was in physical geography last semester and the teacher played a video from YouTube covering sharks. I think that it can be a very useful tool for a classroom to watch to get information or to comment on. Below are the videos that I watched.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKziIkMl7aU&feature=featured

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4eePiRAf5U&feature=featured

Thing #19

I already was signed up for TeacherPop and have some pictures on my page. I added Jukebox and Twitter for the assignment. I joined Gather because it sounded interesting since I listen to NPR all the time and thought I may like some of the discussions. This "thing" was fairly easy since I had already done the assignment.

Thing #18

I singed up for a MySpace account because I liked it better than Facebook. I probably won't use this and only signed up because it was part of the assignment. Who knows though, I may end up loving this site and using it all the time. I will try and remain open-minded to the idea. I do think that it could be useful in a classroom. The reason is because I read where teachers were using social networking to do class projects and they discovered when their work was public for all to see that their work started to improve. They also discovered the kids loved the assignment and had fun. So their is uses for websites like MySpace for the classroom. I think that it is important for teachers to know how these social networking systems work since so many kids are interested in them and are using them. Teachers can take what kids are already doing and having fun with and incorporate it into some assignment. The benefit of being a part of this site is that you can communicate with friends anytime instead of visiting or calling them and it allows you to meet new people.