Thing #19: Social Networking

While working through this Thing #19, I stumbled across Edmodo.  After watching the demo video on the front page this site seems like a very practical tool to use within a classroom.  I love that you can keep a class calendar, submit assignments, and communicate with students through the site.  The interface appears to be very similar to Facebook and an app is available for mobile devices.  I am excited to use this site in my own classroom, and I think my students would enjoy using it.

I have been a member of Pinterest for a few years now and use it frequently for new ideas- mostly crafts and recipes.  Before now I had not considered using it for classroom inspiration.  Other social medias I frequent are Yelp and allrecipes.com.  During college, in 2007, I began an allrecipes.com account and have developed an extensive catalog of recipes and commented, reviewed, and rated several others within this community providing my changes and recommendations on how to tweak a recipe or what went well or disastrous during my experience.  Reading others' comments has actually saved my product several times and created a delightful dish or added a new flare to an old recipe I would not have otherwise thought to change.

Thing #18: Hash Tags and Twitter

I've been pretty successful at avoiding Twitter until today.  I just never really saw a need or use for it given I already have a Facebook.  My first week of long-term subbing, I had written on the board an arrow drawn to the atomic number of an element and wrote "# protons, # electrons" to indicate the atomic number states the number of protons and number of electrons found in an atom of that element.  Immediately I had several students asking me why I was writing hash tag protons and hash tag electrons.  When I explained it was a number sign, they asked me to write "# of..." so they wouldn't be confused.  This experience solidified my annoyance with Twitter, not to mention the graffiti of hash tags on Facebook.

However, I made a twitter account.  I had trouble locating anyone I knew on it, so I am now following the Kansas City Chiefs, the Weather Channel, and Justin Timberlake simply for making this video about hash tags.  When I searched #chemistry I found a lot about the People's Choice Awards.  However, after some digging I did find this article which was very interesting on the use and benefits of iPads in math and science classes.

I believe it is important for educators to be aware and familiar with social networking sites as it is such an integral part of our students' lives.  However, I see their functionality very limited within a classroom setting.

Thing #17: Tagging

I will never again have to use my browser's bookmark function!  Delicious allows me to click a button at the top of my browser and add any site to my own list that can be accessed anywhere.  Furthermore, I can search other's bookmarked pages and add those to my list.  When I searched "educational technologies" I found this site on Project Based Learning, which discussed the use of web-quests.  Delicious could prove highly beneficial as a method for cataloging and searching websites for classroom use.  Through the networking interface on this site, a class could utilize this tool to compile websites while investigating a given topic and share their findings among themselves.

Thing #16: Getting Organized

During college, I used mint.com to help keep track of my finances, which at the time only consisted of my college loans, checking, and savings account.  But, working at an ice cream shop I had limited dollars coming in so I needed a way to keep track of how I was spending my money and a tight budget.  For instance, if I had allotted $30 for eating out for the month, and $100 on groceries, then I needed a way to keep track of remembering how much I was spending.  Mint provided graphs showing how much I had spent during a given period for a given budget, and pie charts showing the percentage I was spending in each category out of total dollars spent.  Mint helped me tremendously during college: I always had food in the refrigerator and a little cash left over for Christmas gifts at the end of the semester.

Lifehacker I found to be quite the opposite: a productivity killer.  Simply because whenever I go there to find some efficient way of doing something, I always end up spending more time just browsing the various articles.  For example: I first started working on this Thing #16 two weeks ago, but am just now circling back around to it because when I saw the link to Lifehacker and visited the site I was sucked into an article titled "How I Pulled Off a 10-Day London Vacation for $700".  Needless to say, investigating this feat was the rest of my evening.

Google calendars - I use them every day and they're wonderful because it helps keep my husband and I in the same loop as to our schedules and family and friend's birthdays.  The calendars even sync to our phones.  Doesn't get any better than that.  As far as start pages, I use the Window's 8 start page that includes weather, gmail, sports, stocks, and photos to name a few.

Thing #15: Wikis

Wikis... a source of information that anyone can edit.  Wikipedia probably ranks as the most well known and utilized wiki.  In the APSU 23 things wiki I added my Thing #14 about flowcharts and mind maps by editing the same page that everyone else had edited.  I found that adding links with this interface, for me, wasn't as simple as on a blog.  However, this tool provides numerous possibilities for the education frontier.

Within the context of a classroom I could create a classroom wiki, and for each unit create a sort of information page that was full of errors and as an assignment have each student to find and make at least two corrections.  Another way a classroom wiki could be utilized is to create a wiki page on a topic and have each student contribute an article, link, or some other form of information to create their own collaborative "online text book" for the topic.

Thing #14: Flowcharts and Mind Maps

For visual learners, flowcharts and mind maps are a God-send.  Using Gliffy I put together this flow chart for writing and identifying equation types for my students.  It's still a rough draft, but this type of visual could really benefit a student in learning complex material.

Also, Mind Maps can be used to connect information in a way that without a visual aide might be difficult to grasp.  Using this site I was able to recreate a map that I drew on the board when talking about ions, cations, anions, and ionic bonds and how they all interconnect.  I was able to then print and distribute the map for those students who were absent.

Thing #13: Google Drive

I all the time when I was an undergraduate (although I think it might have been called something else then) and Google Drive was wonderful for when we had to write those group papers.  A terrible undertaking.  How can you make a 30 page paper with four different people writing it, each with wildly and sometimes non-existent writing styles sound like one voice?  It was trying.   But, without the help of Google Docs it was a manageable task.  I could edit at 2 a.m., the early riser could comment and edit at 6 a.m. while I slept, the late sleeper could pick up at 11 a.m., and the late night coffee drinker could add his two cents at around midnight.  The paper could be edited and developed around the clock, without having to schedule group meetings to collaborate.  It was wonderful!


This tool did have it's drawbacks though... formatting.  At the end of the paper, it would always be some unlucky individuals task to take the mildly formatted Google Doc version and turn it into the professor's desired format.  Microsoft word will always have its place in the world as long as Google Doc has severely limited formatting options.

Here is a link to a Google Sheet I created which shows part of a worksheet I developed in Excel for my Chemistry students that I am long term substituting for.  Again, here the issue was formatting.  Limited border options, and does anyone know how to make subscripts and superscripts using Google Sheets?  However, as I mentioned before this is an excellent tool for collaboration, and would encourage my students to utilize this tool for group projects.

Other productivity tools such as Zoho have their place in the world too, this one in particular could be very beneficial for businesses, especially those with satellite offices.  I would be more likely to use Google Drive given my familiarity with it and its applicability to the world of education.