Thing 8

1) I like the google reader. I love that all of the blogs I am following show up there, and I do not have to go back and forth checking to see if any posts have been made.

2) I can use this in my personal life just about everyday. It would be easy for me to keep up with family and friends back home in Chicago. My students can use this to keep track of each other blogs and also the different blogs that I set up for different class periods.

3) It's a good tool for teachers. We could set up a class reader, and use this tool to communicate with other classrooms outside of the district and even the state of Texas. We could follow their blogs and they could follow ours. We could also follow news and current events.

Thing 7

#1- I really like the google calendar. I am a very time conscious person. I always have doctor's appointments, birthday parties, and other events to attend. Having 2 (almost) 3 kids keeps me pretty busy. I love how easy the calendar is to use. I can set up a calendar that can help my students keep track of assignments that are due, upcoming tests and quizzes, and projects.

#2- I love the iGoogle page. I probably will not personally use it, but again I think that it would be a great tool for my students. For example, if there were a particular news story I wanted them to follow they could add it to their homepage and see new alerts and updates every time they turned on their computers without having to search.

I am not normally a big google user; I usually prefer yahoo. After completing this activity, I am a lot more interested in spending time exploring the many possibilities that google has to offer.

Thing 6

I like the idea of mashups, but they are still a little confusing for me. I think that they would work great during a study of specific literary genre, for example a unit on Shakespeare. We could use the mappr to illustrate the story while still giving the students an idea of where the events occured geographically. I absolutely LOVE the trading cards. Book reports just got alot less boring; character studies, reading responses, the possibilities are endless! I have uploaded my trading card below. It needs some work. (my picture was too large). I am learning and having fun in the process!

Thing 5

I picked this image because of how clear it is to see the animal tracks. When I am teaching my students to track their thinking, I often use animal tracks as a comparison; they show us that the animal has been there. The same way, using post-its to track their thinking shows that the students have read and interacted with the text. Without them leaving tracks of their thinking, no one would ever know they had been there.

Thing 3

The hardest part of this task was not setting up a blog. I have done that before. I took a training in the August staff development that taught me how to do that. The most frustrating part was getting my avatar to show. It kept copying as a link and not as the picture. That was EXTREMELY frustrating. Now that that part is out of the way, hopefully things will go a lot smoother!

Thing 2

The easiest habit for me is beginning with the end in mind. I often sit and down and figure out exactly what my expectation is before I set a new goal. This helps me to stay motivated when I am in the process of completing the goal. It also helps me to decide how rigorous the activity will be, and if it is something I really want to accomplish anyway.

The hardest habit for me is play. It is hard for me to find the time to play with 2 boys under 3 and another that will be here soon. Sometimes, i think that I underestimate the value of play as a means of learning. Hopefully, I will get better at it by the end of this training.