Thing #15

Wikis are a internet tools that to be honest scare me to death. I do not really understand what they are and how they work. But I do know that almost anyone can edit the materials on a wiki and that totally scares me. Although that scares me, it excites me at the same time. I see how a wiki can be highly useful in a 21st century classroom. You can create a page for your class and have all of the materials and assignments for the class accessible to the students at all times. All the students would have to do was post and edit their particular assignments. I enjoyed the sandbox wiki for the apsu23things. It gave me a very minor experience on how wikis work. It also opened my eyes to how simple and effective that this tool can be.

The thing that I found most interesting about wikis is the fact that you and another individual from across the globe can contribute and edit the same materials by using a wiki. By allowing multiple people to contribute to a project or on information you get variety, creativity, and a solid finished product. However, you are putting much trust in another individual whose credibility could be questionable. This is what I found interesting about wikis.

Thing #14

To begin with, I used the bubbl.us mind map website. After about five minutes of using this tool I found it to be highly useful for 21st century classroom. This tool could be used to brainstorm ideas for a paper, project, or just about anything else that you could imagine brainstorming about. I just used the trial and error method to learn how to use this tool and I have to say that it was highly simple. I brainstormed about my activities here at Austin Peay and had the whole storm done within ten minutes. This tool simple, useful, and most importantly effective. I choose this tool because I liked the name.

The second tool that I explored was Gliffy flowchart site and I feel in love with this tool. I was able to express the thoughts that I wanted to extremely quick and effectively. I showed my chart to a friend and they were able to follow the flow of my day by simply evaluating the chart. I wished that I had known that this was an available resource much sooner in my academic career because it would have proved to have been useful. I will definately make the most of this tool in the future. I choose this tool because it was the first tool that was listed on the assignment.

Thing #13

Zoho Writer amazed me. The more I explored the more I found that I liked. It is basically like a free online version of Microsoft Word. You can do all of the things that you can do on that software, and the best part of it is that it is completely free. I basically wasted all of my money buying Word. I enjoyed how anything that I composed on this site I could directly post onto a blog. I also enjoyed the fact that I could work on my projects both on and offline and the two would sync just like an iPod does with iTunes when connected. This is a truly awesome site that I foresee myself using.


https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/17OkUNuuVXKGoe6-wt0zcaT3Gmo-YCpvm8xGsyeYXCDI/edit?pli=1
Google Docs was highly confusing to me, which made it hard for me to understand. From what I learned, students can use this site to collaborate on projects together. They have access to presentations, word documents, drawing boards, and several other formats. The students can then share their creations with one another so that they can learn from each other. This is how I see that students can collaborate using this site.

I prefer Zoho more because of its simplicity. I also feel that it is easier to share my creations with Zoho as it has a way to directly put things directly onto my blog unlike Google. Zoho all the way.

Thing #12

When this class began I thought Google was nothing more than a glorified search engine. However, Google is much more than a search engine. You can create a calandar, translate words, blog, youtube, and so many more options. Google is quickly becoming an everyday part of my life. For this thing, I choose to use Google Translate and Google Calendar.

I really enjoyed using Google Translate. One of my goals in life is to learn to say "I Love You" in the language of every individual that I meet. So I explored this tool by doing just that, I translated I love you in Vietnamese, German, Spanish, Japanese, and Thai language. I was able to hear the actual translation, which helped me brush up on my skills. In the classroom, teachers could use this tool with to translate the Language of foreign countries if the became penpals with students from abroad.

The other tool I choose to use was Google Calendar, a tool that I have already explored and blogged about before. I absolutely loved this tool the first time I explored it and love it even more now. I love how you can create, personalise, and publish your calendar for others to see. In the classroom, teachers can create a calendar of the months assignments and events and post it for all of the students to see. You can also break this calendar down to a daily and hourly view, allowing the user to detail the calendar as much as the want. I really enjoy this tool due to its apparent usefullness in daily life.

Here is a link to my Calendar. Made it to where my PE classes could know what we were doing in class each and everyday.
JC PE Calendar = Click on monthly view and scroll to march to see my creation.

Thing #11

As I began this i was fairly optimistic about finding plenty of blogs about physical education. However, it was the exact opposite. I found myself getting highly frustrated, but equally excited when I found a top quality blog. The tool that I found the easiest to use was the Google Blog Search. It was straight forward and gave me content that was relevant to the materials that I was looking for. The easiest method was just hunting and gathering. I would type in various keywords and just hunt and gather information that I found helpful. The most confusing method to me was all of the other ones that were not affiliated with Google. After several attempts using both, I was highly frustrated because nothing useful or related to physical education popped up.

The most useful blog I found through my searches was Biggar High School PE Department page. It detailed their whole physical education departments goals, standards, and activities. The program was both detailed and structured which I feel will help me out in my searches. Some of the unusual items I found was a page devoted to Mr. Rogers Neighborhood and many pages on Physio programs, which I had never heard of. As for other methods or techniques, I did not venture out into others because I barely knew how to use the ones that we were given.

Thing #10

I absolutely loved the RSS feeder; it has saved me a lot of time and grief. It drove me crazy having to click on a million different links to get to any blog that I wanted to read, however that has all changed. Now all I have to do is sign into my reader account and everything is there. How amazing is that? It is extremely convenient and time efficient which I like. I can use this technology in my classroom to stay informed on what other physical educators are doing. I can also use this to follow credible physical education sources and provide materials for my class to study and look over. In my personal life I can use this to follow blogs or any other form of information that I want with one easy click of the mouse. As I mentioned earlier, teachers can use this technology to stay up to date with what other teachers are doing and going through in their classrooms. RSS feeder is in my opinion the best tool we have been introduced to so far in this class. I typically do not trust technology, but I do believe that RSS feeder as recently gained my trust.

Thing #9

I really enjoyed playing around with the image generators. I spent most of my time in The Happy Face Generator, and had an absolute blast. There are many uses for these image generators in the classroom and in my personal life. In the classroom these signs could be used for encouragement or provide you with something to put your class rules on. Personally, I could see myself using these generators to put Bible verses on or simple words of encouragement.

I created this smiley sign with the Bible verse John 3:16 because this verse speaks the truth about God's love for us. He gave his one and only son for us, which is totally awesome because it is evident in my life. Praise be to God for giving us his one and only son.

I created this smiley image because "KISS" is my motto. As the sign shows it stands for Keep It Simple Stupid. I have to constantly remind myself that I need to keep things simple, so I decided to share it with you guys. I feel that it is even more fitting for this setting since I am not a wizard when it comes to using technology. Hope you guys enjoy.