YAY! the end! *one more thing*

When I first started this blog I thought I would never finish! The tasks seemed like they'd be too complicated and I would never figure it out! Well now that I have finished, I totally loved every bit of it! There were so many great things that I can't even begin to respond to them. The only ones that didn't grab my attention were the flowchart and mind bubble websites; these just weren't as exciting as the others. They were great websites just nothing that I would use. I really think that I'm going to periodically look at the 23 things to just refresh my memory of all the activities. 

I never even though of lifelong learning goals until they were presented to me at the beginning of this process. When I take a step back and look at the bigger picture, I see that everything is a learning experience and I should try to make an attempt to learn something new everyday. Whether it be from students, colleagues, parents, friends, or a woman in a store, I hope to learn something from someone or some thing. 

I really didn't expect to learn so much from Web 2.0. I had no idea that there were so many things to explore on the internet that could be useful for educators. There are so many ways to exchange information and gather information from other people or resources. You can create so many things on the internet that can be saved for later use or presented a wide range of viewers. Its a great concept and I am so glad that I have been exposed to these advantages of the internet. 

I hope to use all of the things I have learned in my future classroom. A lot of times you hear of teachers having students that have to educate them on technology but I hope to be the one who is educating the students on up-to-date technology and information and maybe even being ahead of the game. The only way to stay ahead of your students is why making sure you know all the ends and out to what is new and what is out of date and how things work. Maybe I will be able to be successful in this aspect. I plan to regularly check back with the many resources that I have been exposed to in order to stay in tuned with Web 2.0 and all the new features. It will be difficult because it changes so fast, but as along as I stick with it, it shouldn't be a problem!

Thing 23?!? Already!?!? *thing 23*

Creative Commons can be very resourceful for people to preserve their work and still regulate how it's used. Instead of making it where no one can use an author's piece of work, they can decide whether or not they want people to be able to recreate their work or share it in any way or be able to receive profit from it. Teaching how to properly use resources from the internet is very essential in today's classroom. Most student's are getting their information for projects and papers from resources off the internet and they need to know when they can use things and how they can use them or when they can't use them at all. It is also crucial for teachers to know the Creative Commons laws for their own research they will do over their teaching career. So many things are made to be hands on and easily accessible on Web 2.0 that it's not hard to see what can be used and what can't but at the same time its so easy to just take things that aren't your own. As long as you pay attention to these laws, you won't have to worry about the threat of plagiarism and having faulty work or research.

Double Deuce! *thing 22*

I searched through Education Podcast Directory and followed the links on the side on the page. I looked through several categories searching for a podcast that interest me as well as kept my attention. This website was easier to navigate than some of the others and felt user-friendly. I found a podcast called "Science on the Wild Side". This particular podcast caught my attention by its name, first off, and kept it when I found out that the artist or narrator (not real sure which it is) was rapping in each one about the wild animal or place that the podcast was saluting too. It was really interesting and would keep student's attention easily. This podcast could definitely be used in the classroom that's for sure. I'm not real sure if creating a podcast is something I'd be too good at, but I do enjoy hearing what other people have to say. I might one day change my mind about podcast but it just seems like too much for me at the moment. I actually might try to keep up with this particular podcast, my only problem is remembering all of these things. I have the same problem with social networks and blogs.

7 times 3 *thing 21*

Well ain't that the coolest thing! Animoto is an awesome video creating website. Its super easy to use with it's step by step instructions. You add your own pictures or videos to the video website and choose from a selection of music. The only thing that isn't the greatest is that the music isn't an easy selection. You can't just add music from your own itunes library, you have to choose from Animoto's own music. It wasn't easy to choose sense I didn't know any of the artists besides the Classical artists. This is why I chose Mozart! Oh well, there is ups and downs to everything and it can't always be perfect but either way this website can be used in many different ways, I just hope that I can remember to use it for other creative things. My video is a collection of pictures from my trip to Edisto Island, South Carolina this summer. There are pictures of Magnolia Plantation in Charleston and also picture from the beach at Edisto. Hope you enjoy it!

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Two Decades! *thing 20*

Youtube has everything! Anytime you need to hear a song or watch a show or any sort of video of anything, you can ALWAYS Youtube it! I believe that Youtube can be and is used as a verb just the same as Google is. Everyone always says "just Youtube it!" and everyone knows what they're talking about. I probably go to Youtube once a week to look up something. Youtube can be very useful in the classroom for many things such as research or in lectures to demonstrate topics or give additional information. The video I thought was worth putting in my blog is "Stalking Cat". Its so funny and creepy to watch you just have to pay attention. I've found myself watching it many times! Hope you enjoy it if you haven't seen it!

19 things and counting... *thing 19*

The only social networks that I am apart of are facebook and now TeacherPop (pending still). I've been a part of facebook for a while now and it has awesome features. You can do pretty much anything on this network. TeacherPop can be very useful. Being able to exchange thoughts and ideas with other educators is great. And the fact that TeacherPop was started at APSU is also beneficial. I don't use facebook very much anymore so it doesn't benefit me as much as it could. I still like I waste more time than anything. TeacherPop, on the other hand, can be very useful for me it just depends on whether I use it appropriately or use it at all.

18th century *thing 18*

I used to be really in to the whole social networking thing, or better yet, facebook, but here recently I have stayed away from it. I feel like it can become really addicting and distracting, especially when you are supposed to do a majority of your school work on the computer. It can also cause a lot of drama for friends and relationships if its not used appropriately. It can also be a source for cyber-bullying. Social-networking is a great idea as long as its used right. Since this was my first time logging on to my facebook account in quite a few months, a lot of things had changed since my last visit. There are plenty of cool features to keep a mind busy for a long period of time. I think social-networking would be as beneficial to a classroom as a blog would be. From a personal standpoint, I really don't see the point in using either one of these just because of all the other resources and applications out there. It could possibly come in to good use one day, but nothing significant enough to think of now! 

FACEBOOK LINK!

17 again! *thing 17*

Being able to access things that you have bookmarked from any computer makes researching and viewing certain topics really easy. This could help in the classroom when you have bookmarked a certain web page at your home computer and need access to it on your classroom computer. All you would have to do is pull up the delicious account and access your bookmarked pages and pull them up for your students or fellow teachers to view. I'm not real sure if I would use this personally, but the thought of it sounds good! I would be more prone to try and remember the specific site or just write it down. Having so many different accounts on so many different websites is too much of a hassle for me. This idea is great for all the people who love their internet access!

16 things and counting... *thing 16*

I choose to go ahead and reorganize and change colors and other things on my already made iGoogle homepage. I have been using this as my homepage since the previous thing that had iGoogle on it. I really enjoy it and use a lot of the features that are on it daily. The online calendar could be useful for always having access to your calendar instead of worrying about keeping up with it you can just log on to it on the internet. I probably wouldn't use it much because I already have a hard enough time keeping up with my calendar I use now. The online to-do list is a cool idea but I think its too much work for a simple task that only needs a pen and scratch piece of paper. Most to-do lists are good mainly for when you're going to the store or around the house and its way more convenient to have a piece of paper rather than logging on the internet. But some people do benefit from this things on the web, just not me.

15 shmififteen! *thing 15*

Before this exercise I didn't know that Wikipedia was a "wiki" and there were other features like this. Wikis give you another to share and exchange information on the internet without being stuck to something. Wikis are applications that allow users to change information or post new information. Things in the world change all the time and so should on the information on the internet, so the convenience of being able to change it yourself and also check past information without having to register with anything is pretty awesome. Wikis give schools and libraries different ways to share ideas and information. Making a wiki site would be a good idea for a teacher who had a lot going on the classroom. It would give the students other means of sharing notes and helpful information for whatever may be going on and the teacher can also add information to enhance the student's experience. The only disclaimer I would have with using wikis is that it could be hard to trust some information sometimes, especially if you are looking up something for a research paper or a crucial topic that has a lot of different heartfelt views. But other than that, I think wikis  are a good idea.

Quatorze! *thing 14*

Templates for mind maps and flow-charts are pretty nifty for anyone who can't get something started. A mind map can help when you are trying to brainstorm for either a project or a paper. These mind map websites give you an idea of how your ideas show flow. Flow-charts can be used for many things such as presentations and projects to present a flow of an idea or sequence of something. I explored Gliffy and Bubbl.us which were two good websites that can benefit me or anyone else with a project or presentation that they are having trouble getting started.

Bakers Dozen *thing 13*

I am totally amazed that there is basically "WORD" free on the internet. Zoho Writer is a pretty darn cool app that can be very useful to a lot of people. It makes me think of the students who don't have a computer so therefore they wouldn't have those Microsoft Office programs to use. Instead of using Word on the schools computer and saving it and possibly losing it, they can make a Zoho Writer account and never have to worry about being at a certain computer to access their work. The features on Zoho amazed me. I would never think that something that is so detailed would be free to everyone. It makes creating things and writing things super duper easy for anyone. You don't have to look spell check or word count, its right there on the toolbar for you to access. I think this app could be very beneficial to a lot of people.

the 12th man *thing 12*

I never knew that Google did anything more than search for everything in the world and give you access to an email account. Google tools gives you a lot of other things that you can do. iGoogle is really neat with all the gadgets and other tools that let you customize it to your liking. I ended up making iGoogle my homepage because I didn't have one and I added everything that I enjoy looking at on there. This could be used in the classroom for personal and/or student use to keep up to date with news topics or anything else we choose to look at daily. Google Translate is very convenient. Instead of having to "google" translator websites, you can just automatically go to Google Translate and translate anything you need. This tool could be used in the classroom for whenever there is an assignment or research that has something written in a different language. You could easily pull it up and translate the words in to English or vice versa. Picasa Web Albums is a site that lets you share your photos with others and also look at a ton of other peoples photos. When I first went to this tool, it pulled up all the photos that I had on my blog which was pretty cool but also kinda creepy because my face was just sitting there on a website that I had never been too! Google Calendar is a pretty nifty tool also. Its something I probably wouldn't use, because everything I do try and use an electronic calendar of some sort I always forget about.

seven ELEVEN *thing 11*

The search tools for finding blogs within a certain topic is pretty useful. When I first clicked on the Google Blog Search it wasn't very helpful for me probably just because I wasn't real sure what to search for or anything. I then went to the Topix blog search and it went straight to a local page of everything that is going around in town which caught my interest. It had a lot of useful tools on the page. It basically had everything you could think of from local news to shopping and coupons to sports and entertainment. I really enjoyed this and spent a lot of time on it when I should be working on other stuff! But the only thing was I couldn't figure out how to add it to my RSS or if I was supposed to choose a specific feed to look at but that seemed very limited. Oh well, I'm sure I'm doing it wrong but its alright!

"I give it a 10 Ms. Davis!" *thing 10*

I was kinda sketchy about this "thing" when I first started reading. It didn't seem that interesting to me. But once I jumped into how to actually do it, I found that it could actually be beneficial. It makes it really easy to keep up with things you enjoy reading and keeping up-to-date with other blogs and feeds that are interesting. I think I'll actually use this on a daily basis. Its very convenient and I think it'll be very beneficial in the classroom. I think its good to keep students updated on news that's going on locally and around the country. I could add all the news feeds that they enjoy keeping up with and also have feeds that correlate with topics that we are going over in class. Having all of these feeds very accessible in one location would really cut down on time when pulling up certain topics to talk about.

Niner Niner hit a liner *thing 9*

Well I've never been so overwhelmed with how many options I had for this "thing"! So I kept it simple and made a future sign for my classroom! I used this image generator to create this lovely sign. Its awesome what you can do with all of these image generators but unless you know exactly what you want, its hard to chose what you want to create. Too bad I'm not super creative and can think of something totally awesome to post on here, but at least I can use this one day in my classroom!

8 maids a milking *thing 8*

All of these flickr mashups were really neat. Its a lot of things I would have never thought to even look for. I chose to play with the create puzzles with flickr and I used one of my own photos from my South Carolina trip this past summer. The picture is of a peacock sitting on a fence looking over the field.

Flickr and Flickr mashups are all really creative sites that could be used for anything. You can make anything look more creative and personable but using any of these mashups its just a matter of remembering to step outside the box and use something that isn't normal!

Seventh Inning Stretch... *thing 7*

When I first went to the flicker explore page, I typed in "Min Pin". I have a Chocolate Miniature Pincher that I absolutely love so I decided to see how many other people love their min pin just like me! So I found a ton of pictures that I loved but I couldn't use them due to all the copyrights so I just have a link to a Chocolate Min Pin that reminds me so much of my dog. Just like all min pins, they are always sticking their nose in to places they shouldn't and usually get caught! But they are precious and the perfect cuddle buddy. Flicker is an awesome website to use for looking for any kind of picture. Its really fun looking at all the images that people can capture that can be so amazing.

Top of the Sixth! *thing 6*

Well first of all, just as I didn't know about Web 2.0, I didn't know they had awards for the best websites. Anyhow, I chose Pandora. This website was really awesome. Its a website where you can go and listen to the radio in a sense. You can type in any song, artist, or genre and Pandora will make a radio station customized towards that particular song or artist. Its very convenient for listening to new music you might have heard somewhere or for if you like a certain style because it'll find the music that is similar to the choice you made. This website could definitely be used in the classroom, well at least my classroom. Music is fun and can add excitement to anything and grab the attention of anyone if the right selection is made. So being able to find any song I want and actually having the whole song will be very beneficial to have in and out of the classroom. Needless to say, I'm very impressed with Pandora and will be a regular visitor!

Five-and-Dime *thing 5*

Before I read the articles and watched the videos on Web 2.0 I didn't really know what it was about. I honestly thought it was more complicated than what it actually is. Web 2.0 is the "read/write web" as describe in What is Web 2.0 where they also describe Web 1.0 as "the read only web". Honestly, before even opening this assignment, I had no idea that there was a Web 1.0 and 2.0. I guess I haven't really seen the drastic change in the internet or really thought it was such a change; I assumed that it was just a normal progression in sites and web pages. Web 2.0 gives people like you and me the chance to create our own things on the internet just as we are doing right here with blogs. We also have the availability to use other peoples work and/or move things from one thing to another. It also enables us, as educators, to collaborate with other teachers and use material that wouldn't have been available in Web 1.0.

Schools have also gone through this transition; instead of using paper everything and textbooks, teachers and students are now using such things as power points and online textbooks to teach and learn. Teachers are using blogs to communicate with their students and parents. Its an easier and more accessible form of communication. Since technology changes constantly, teachers should always be on top of their game when it comes to the newest and best resource. Kids usually come into school, especially upper grades, knowing a lot about technology already so we need to be able to stay ahead so they can stay on track.

Number 4 *thing 4*

Since this whole blog thing is new to me, the commenting aspect is new too. After reading the posts about commenting I began to understand the whole reasoning for posting blogs. You post blogs in order to let out how you feel and most of the time want comments on whatever it is you're saying. Once someone comments on your blog or vice versa, you establish a communication and slowly start interacting with a community. In one of the posts for commenting, they discussed how it isn't necessary to comment with only one word responses  or short little statements. You typically need to write something that is meaningful towards the author or post whether you are agreeing or disagreeing.

The People that I've chose to follow within our group are wordsofwilson bloggeriley Hallaback cottencandy and thedean. All of these people have very interesting points and are all very creative and I enjoy looking at their blogs that they update with each thing. The two people outside of our group that I will be following are cheryl and amber.duncan . These 2 I know from other classes and enjoy seeing what they have to say about their experiences.

*Third times a charm* (thing 3)

Using my blog in my teacher education program can benefit me by letting me communicate with other future teachers and also get other ideas and comments from them. Being a teacher and using a blog could expand my communication with parents and even students. It can allow for parents to read about what's going on in the classroom and upcoming dates. Having a blog could establish a great form of communication that all teachers should have with their student's parents. Using a blog will also let me transfer information with fellow teachers either within the same school and school system or even in different areas.

*Rounding 2nd* (thing 2)

Creating my blog and my avatar was an adventure within itself. I, of course, didn't know where to begin and kept having to go back and look at everything and change it back and forth. It was crazy. But then I acquired help from a fellow peer and made my way to the blog you're viewing now! My blog name is my middle and last name within the saying "making it okay": Kaye King. I tried to be somewhat creative but I see that I'm no where close to where some people are. My avatar looks nothing like me! The hair, clothing, accessories, and setting is all about me but the avatar as a whole is silly! I have my avatar wearing jeans and a t-shirt because that is the clothing that I'm most comfortable in and that I'm typically wearing. She is also holding a Starbucks cup because I love coffee. The setting is at a sporting event. I have been involved in sports my whole life; volleyball and softball in high school and have picked up tennis and golf since then. I also enjoy attending all types of sporting events especially football games. So I tried my best to get my avatar to look like me but I think I could have done a better job.

*1 small step* (thing 1)

The 7 1/2 Learning Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learning video gave a lot of insight to how I should think of everyday activities and how to future my knowledge in everyday life. The habit that is most difficult for me to practice is Habit 3: View Problems as Challenges. On a daily basis, I usually consider problem that I'm faced with as a crisis instead of just thinking through the situation and seeing the good that could come from it. My day and life all together would be way less stressful if I would just sit back and let things happen instead of worrying about the problem. The Habit that I feel is the easiest for me to practice is 7 1/2: Play! I work at a daycare and our shirts say it all: "I get paid to play at Pleasant View Daycare!". It is the reason I love going to work; I love playing with kids and being a part of their everyday life.

I'm looking forward to learning how to use all the different things with Web 2.0. Being able to use technology to make tasks easier or furthering your knowledge on something is always a good thing. Creating my blog was totally new for me. I didn't know where to begin. It took me a little while to figure out where everything goes and how it works but its almost starting to click. Every time I get on here I figure out something new, which is good. Maybe after my 23rd thing, I will have it all figured out!