Final Project

Final Project - Individual

My final project in the class was to help my husband promote his business. In order to do this, I decided to help make him more available on the web. I decided that I was going to create a Facebook page, website and an instagram account. I am still in the progress with creating an instagram account. My husband doesn't really see the point to instagram so I am still working on convincing that it is a good plan. I have already created a Facebook account which can be found here.  I have also create a temporary website. For a project in another class this semester, I have created a website that I will eventually transfer over to his own website. The website that I have already created can be found here. I am still hoping to do more things on the web to be able to promote his business. 

Non-Copyright Content

Non-Copyright Content

This assignment was pretty hard for me to find. I didn't really know what exactly I was looking for at first. Then I tried to think about what I would use the most. Everyday in my classroom, I use Evernote. It is where I keep my daily plans. I would like to put picture with each of my daily plans. So I ended up looking for non-copyright images. I looked into my search and found Stock Photos. They are free photo's and images that you can download. These picture are as is. I will be able to use these picture for all of my daily plans. There are a ton of pictures on the site. 

WishTrip

WishTrip

Every other year, I travel to Indiana for Thanksgiving to visit with my family. One thing that my husband and I love to do is to go hiking. I have created a map of the different State Parks along the way from North Carolina to Indiana. I have not visited any of these state parks, so this is a wish trip that I would love to take. Hopefully one day I'll be able too. Since I did this on google maps, most of the places I selected had pictures already with them. Therefore, I was not able to add my own pictures to the places. 

View Trip back home in a larger map

GeoTagging

GeoTagging

I haven't/don't use flickr that often. So this was obviously my first time using the geotagging feature. I think that the geotagging feature is really cool. It would be great if I have traveled in numerous places around the world, just to see where all I have been based on pictures. I am definitely planning to travel more often and it would be great to put picture up from everywhere. 

Here is a picture that I put up on Flickr. It was taken at Crowders Mountain.

Here is a link to my Flickr map

I was not sure what the EXIF data was, so I decided to look it up. It took me to a website called www.exifdata.com. This website allowed you to upload a picture or a url to a picture and it told you a lot of information about the picture. Below is a screen shot of the information for a picture I uploaded. From what I read, some images could have the GPS coordinates on there, but the ones that I looked at did not.

Next is a video about PhotoSynth. First off, I love TED Talks videos. I recently had my students do a project on a video. The video's on TED Talks are very informational. I found this video very interesting. I thought it was really cool that they can compile a lot of pictures from around the world into one picture. It takes your pictures being all over the web to a whole new level. I also found it really cool that it even showed from what angle the pictures were taken from. I am definitely going to look more into it.

Projects

Projects

So far, the projects are coming along. I am a little confused on the different types of projects that we have to complete. For my individual project, I am going to help my husband promote his side business. He does different paintings, airbrushing, and drawing. He is studying to be Graphic Designer. I believe I may be involved in two group projects. I am not really for sure. I am working on doing a Evolution of Dance group project. I am going to record the dances that I signed up for. I am also participating in the Ice Cream group project. I just created a twitter page for it and I have shared the facebook page to try to get my friends to contribute. I am also participating in the promoting of New Media and Global Education Program. I have created a youtube page for testimonies on the New Media and Global Education Program.  I am not sure when all of the assignments are due but I am working this week to get them done. 

Resume Promo Blurb

Resume Promo Blurb

I have been working in Web tools area for almost 10 years now. Any questions you may have about any type of Web 2.0 tool or even any technological tool, I am sure that I can be of assistance. I have been through numerous amounts of trainings and now lead Professional Development seminars with other colleagues on the use of Web 2.0 tools. 

Objectives

My Objectives

Old Objectives:

• To become more familiar with Web 2.0 tools
• Be introduced to different types of social media
• Learning different tools to be able to use them in my classroom.
• Get used to blogging and be able to be creative with it. 

New Objectives:

• To become more familiar with Web 2.0 tools
• Be introduced to different types of social media
• Learning different tools to be able to use them in my classroom.
• Get used to blogging and be able to be creative with it. 
• To become more active in social media
• To become more open to the different parts of social media. 

My objectives haven't really changed so far. I believe that there are many Web 2.0 tools to be learning each and everyday. There are just so many out there, that I don't believe anyone will know every single Web 2.0 tool out there. I know majority of social media. Mostly the main ones (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and so on). One that I was introduced to this semester was Second Life. I have not gotten to spend much time on Second Life to still be familiar with it. Hopefully I will be able to gain more knowledge about it very soon. I would like to become more active in all the different types of social media. I have been learning tools all through my graduate classes to incorporate into my students classroom. Blogs have been the biggest impact in my classroom. I have incorporated the use blogs in students projects. By doing this, I have been able to become more used to using blogs myself. All in all, I believe I am reaching towards achieving my goals, but I don't think all of them are set to be reached this semester. 

Tie the Worlds Together

Meeting Someone

In order to complete this assignment, I did it through facebook. I decided to look for people through Western Carolina University's facebook of people who were Resident Assistants. I was a RA while I was in college. I decided that it would be a good connection to have. I find someone named Leah who happened to be an RA this year from the building I was in last year. I begin to message her and just talked about being an RA. Next we decided to meet up. We both like doing things for other people so we decided that we would help out at Habitat for Humanity. We met up at the house we were doing improvements too. After the day of volunteering was over, we decided to go grab a bite to eat. I believe that we both had a great time and will remain friends.

Embedding

Embedding

Embedding the different types of media were not to terrible. I found it really easy to embed them into my blog. All I had to do was go to the share feature and it had the html code. I don't know if the embedding was simple because all the tools I decided to use. Or if I just got lucky. 

YouTube 

   



Flickr





SoundCloud

What License to Use?

License to Use?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/field_museum_library/3947976595/

I chose this picture because I like flowers. I also really like lily pads. So I thought this picture was a perfect fit. I am really wanting spring weather around here, so I guess you could say that it contributed to me finding a picture with flowers. 

My photo is from British East Africa. It was taken by Carl Akeley. It is a close up of lotus flower beds study in 1906. It is free of restrictions because it is so old. 

This picture is free from restrictions because the Flickr Commons stated so. 

I think the restrictions that I would put on it would depend on what I created. I don't know if I would but any restrictions on personal photography unless I was a professional photography. I would definitely want to fully license any educational work that I would create because I would hate for anyone to take my work and change it. Or even fully license it as themselves. 

Wikimedia

Wikimedia

I am still surprised everyday I learn more information about branches of Wikipedia. Today, I am going to review Wikispecies and Wikivoyage. 

Wikispecies:

I chose this project just because it sounded interesting. There is a science teacher at my school that we share a lot of resources with so I figured this could be one of them. Wikispecies is a place to find a directory for all species. Any one is able to edit the information on the Wikispecies site. It is also linked with Encyclopedia of Life Project.

Wikivoyage:

Wikivoyage is the worlds largest free, update, world travel guide. Wikivoyage was actually published this year in January. I picked this topic because I really want to travel. This website allows you to look up any information pertaining to the different places. I was pretty impressed with the Wikivoyage. 

SoundCloud

SoundCloud

SoundCloud is a place to upload any type of audio. I created a SoundCloud because I saw other people talking about it and decided to give it a try. It was pretty simple to link the other profiles to this page. I am not familiar with only uploading audio tracks. I am not really into singing or anything along that nature. I can see this being a great tool for a audio recording of a teacher for a lesson, especially in college. Professors could easily record the lectures and post them so the students could refer back to them. 

Link to SoundCloud Profile

Flickr

Flickr

I have never really cared to have a Flickr account. I believe at one time I had a PhotoBucket account, which I believe is very similar to Flickr. I just don't really have time to upload different photos to Flickr. I think its a really cool place to post pictures on, but I wouldn't use it everyday. A flickr account was easy to create. I don't believe I was able to link all my profiles together. If anyone has some suggestions please share!

Here is my Flickr Account. 

Youtube

Youtube

Creating a Youtube account was very simple. I just logged in through google and it set me up an account. It was also really easy to link the different profiles to my youtube account. I have not had any interest before now to create a youtube account. I know that there are plenty of different reasons to create a youtube account. I also think its really cool to see what some people post on youtube. Youtube has a way of trapping you. I feel like you could look up on thing and it continues on from there. Before you know it, you have spent an hour watching different types of videos from youtube. 

Here is my Youtube profile. 

Class Thus Far

First Week or Two

At the very beginning of this class, I didn't know how to take it. The class didn't have much structure at all. I completely understand why the Professor chose to start the class off that way. It was a great change to the class. One thing that I really liked about starting the class off like that is seeing who would continue to contribute in the class and to see who would not worry about participating in class.  I personally like the structure a lot more. I am a very busy person, as a am sure a lot of people are, and I find due dates to be important. There are some days that I have set aside for working on grad school assignments so the structure and the due dates help me to plan what I need to get done during the week. 

Beginning and Blogging

At the very beginning of the class, we were told to create a blog. I have never used a blog before so I was looking forward to creating one. The blogging is one of the many things that I like about this class. I like to have a place to express what I think about different assignments and how I feel about them. The blogs are also nice to see how other people in the class feel. 

Defining Terms

It was nice to have everyone collaborating and sharing the terms that they found important. It was also good to have a common definition for everyone to relate too. It also helped to go back and see what certain words meant if I wasn't sure. During this week, we also were able to define social media/web 2.0 tools. It was very useful to go back through and read the different type of tools that were available on the web. It was useful to see what Web 2.0 tools that most people use. 

Second Life

Second Life was a very different world for me to experience. It was not at all what I was expecting it to be. I believe it would be a great tool to use for socializing. Some of the material/content on Second Life definitely needs to be monitored if children got on there. During the week we explored Second Life, we also looked at Wordles. I have used Wordles before in my classroom but I didn't know that we could insert whole paragraphs into the Wordles to be created. 

Wikipedia 

For information about wikipedia (since it was very recent) you can visit my other blog page. 

Overall

Overall, I am really enjoying this class. It does take up a good amount of time to put into the class, but I am really learning so much about Web 2.0 tools. The class is going at a great pace and we are accomplishing and going over a lot of tools to be able to use. I also like how we get to explore the different tools and blog about them. I am enjoying how everyone shares their blogs website so that we are able to go back and read everyones experiences. I am looking forward to see what is coming. 

Social Bookmarking

Delicious

Link to Delicious

I have never used a social bookmarking tool. Any time that I have wanted to save the urls that I have went too, I have just saved them on my bookmarks on google chrome. Google allows you to sync all your accounts where it can remember you bookmarks that you have. I created an account in delicious to see what it was like. I see how it would be helpful to keep up with all the urls that you have to know. 

Wikipedia

Wikipedia

Here is a link to my profile. 

All throughout high school and college, I have always been told to not use Wikipedia as a source. Don't look up information on Wikipedia. Don't even access Wikipedia. I learned in high school to never use it. Therefore, I haven't used Wikipedia. I would look at it for information on TV series to see what episode I missed. 

This Module has let me see all the different features that are possible with Wikipedia. I didn't know anything about Wiktionary or Wikiversity. It is very easy to make edits to the different posts. The formatting for the pages isn't to hard to grasp either. The tutorial page is extremely helpful in finding information to get through publishing/editing pages. I am already trying to think of ways to incorporate the use of a Wikipedia page in my classroom. I would like for it to be something that my students work on all year long.

Wikipedia is built on five pillars. I was not aware of what these pillars were until this module. The pillars really explain the purpose of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is meant to be an encyclopedia. It is a place for everyone to access information. Everything is free and is able to be edited. Overall, I think that the teachers that I had put a bad impression of what Wikipedia is and the capabilities that it has. I will be sure to include the truth about wikipedia in my classroom.  

Second Life

Second Life

I had my first interaction to Second Life last Sunday. I think that from a social point of view, Second Life would be great. It allows for people to interact with each other. But I think for me, Second Life is not something that I would get into. I don't really have a lot of time for all the work I have to do, let alone time to socialize over the internet through Second Life. As I can see the perks/benefits to Second Life, I don't really think it is for me. 

Web 2.0 Graphics

Web 2.0 Logo

I found it difficult to find a place to create a logo. I picked the logo I did because I thought that it fit perfectly to what I wanted. The whole reason I chose to do a logo on REaCH is because it is where I work. We recently changed/created a theme for our school. Our theme is iConnect. This is our theme because are students connect with everything/everyone at our school. This logo just describes us perfectly. 

Wordles

Wordles

Here is the link to my who I am wordle.

Who I am


This is the paragraph that I made for the Wordle.

I tend to think of myself as very technologically savvy. I believe that I have the skills for any Web 2.0 position. There are so many different skills that I am well qualified. For instance, there are many Web2.0 tools that I am familiar with. To begin with, I know different types of social media. For example, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Edmodo, and Google Plus. There are also a lot of tools still relate to Web2.0 tools, such as, Wikipedia, Pinterest, SecondLife, Skype, Shutterfly and many more. If there is a Web 2.0 tool that I am not familiar with, I will be sure to figure it out. 

Then here is my wordle. 

Who I'll be

This is Web2.0 Grandma

What is Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is an internet dynamic platform that that allows users to be consumers of information and well as creators of information.  Web 2.0 is the futile landscape where virtual communities can form and strive. We travel around this landscape on keyboards to construct knowledge by interacting with others near and far. Collaborating using web 2.0 tools, such as blog or video sharing tools, is revolutionizing the field of education and training. Perhaps, Web 2.0 is the engine of social changes as knowledge can no longer confined or blocked by national borders.     

Grandma, you know what the computer is, and you use it daily. There is this new term that is floating around called Web 2.0. Web 2.0 refers to ways to be socializing (hanging out) with people on the Internet. I am going to give you an example that will help explain what Web 2.0 skills are. So think about going to a meeting for work. You have to meet up with everyone in the conference room. There are tools on the Internet to allow for everyone to meet up together on a certain website. Everyone can meet together with out driving to the location for a meeting. With Web 2.0 tools we can socialize with more people in an easier way. Using Web 2.0 tools will let you keep in touch with me since I live so far away. I will help you get some Web 2.0 tools such as Facebook next week.

Impromp 2.0

Impromp 2.0

Web 2.0 are skills from the 21st century that focus on collaboration. It collaborates different items from the Internet to bring together social networking and social media. It allows people to collaborate with each other. 

Private Universe Theory & Teaching Follow-Up

First Article

This article relates back to one of the first questions we were asked in this class. When we were asked this question, I was highly confused as to why we would be talking about it in this class. After reading the transcript of the video, I was very surprised. I believe that as we found out, a lot of teachers believe that students already know certain material. Teachers may think the information is common knowledge when it isn't at all. Reading this, has really made me think of how many times I, as a teacher, have assumed that my students know certain materials when they don't. 

First Video:

I actually use the Khan Academy videos with my students. I do not use them to teach my students but I use them for review. Each day I post extra resources to go along with each lesson that we learn daily. I would have to agree with what the video was talking about. Students today are given videos or lesson that just tell them the answers. If people/students think that they already know the answer, they will not learn the correct answer. With video's, people chose to listen to the material that they want to. I believe that we will still need teachers in our society. We can't just give students video's after videos and expect them to learn the material because sometimes students just can't retain the information needed. 

Second Video:

Well a lot of people seemed to think the same thing about the seasons. I also believed that it had to do with the distance of the Earth from the Sun. I didn't know that the Sun only moved 3% away from the earth. One thing that I didn't like about this video was that it didn't necessarily tell the right answer or agree with an answer. It only talked about what answers were incorrect. 

Wesch - Thinking Differently, Doing Differently

What does this mean?

Video 1:

I found the first video very interesting. I have never seen this video before. 

Meaning: I believe that this video means that digital text is constantly changing around the world. At the beginning, creating webpages, blogs or anything of that nature took a lot of studying programming. Today, they already have programs installed to wear you don't have to know html codes to create a blog. To me, i believe this means that more people around the world can create webpages, blogs and many more because of the technology today. 

Thoughts: I found this video intriguing. It was very realistic as to how digital text is continuing changing. I would it funny that It showed a yahoo html page that was dated in 1996. Even now, technology has changed drastically from then. I liked how the text was continuously changing. I did find it hard to read at times.

Video 2:

This video really spoke out to me. 

Meaning: To me, this video portrays how much technology is used but not used wisely each day. Students are constantly on their computers during class but yet they may not be doing educational things. Students are using physical texts that much anymore. Teachers aren't even having to write on chalk boards or dry erase boards anymore. The technology that we have is allowing for us to use different ways to present the materials to students. 

Thoughts: I felt like I could relate a lot to this video. I believe this is how students are feeling today. I know that I have had to buy textbooks for certain classes and never even opened a text book. I also have to say that I am lucky that I went to a small school because I never had to deal with having over 40 people in the classroom. 

Video 3:

Meaning: Questions are the key to a good education. We of course need answers to certain questions but we need to keep asking questions. You should ask questions that require students to think. The more question you ask, the more the students are continually thinking about what it is your looking for. 

Thoughts: I definitely agree with this. As a teacher, you always want your students to have the correct answers. But if you ask simple yes or no questions or just one answer questions, then the students won't have much of a though process. I believe the more question and deep thinking you pose upon students, then the more they will learn. 

Video to Share with Class

Technology Crafts

Video Feedback

I found it extremely hard to give people feedback on their videos. I thought that everyone did a good job but in a different way. I couldn't find two videos that were exactly the same. I felt like our videos didn't have to be a formal video so I know I didn't really try to make my formal. I believe if I knew we were going to critique each other I would have done mine over again. There is a chance that everyone thought the same as I did. There could have been people that are perfectionist and did make theirs the best they could. Either way, it was hard to give people critiques. 

Defining Web 2.0 tools

What else do we need?

I believe that it would have been better for us to discuss this in a classroom or in a virtual classroom. i think that a lot of people would have different opinions as to what their definitions are. With that being said, having a classroom discussion would allow people to back up their definition that they have chosen. It would also give us a change to see what everyone thought the most information to include in our definitions. Doing this as a group would allow for us to develop a truly class wide definition.

Position Listing

Position Listing

IGA Adventure Center is looking for a Web 2.0 Specialist.

Requirements:

• One must have the minimum requirements of at least a four year degree in New Media or a related technology field. 
• Basic and Advanced Computer Skills
• Be able to navigate through and use a Mac or PC computer
• Use the Web 2.0 tools to promote IGA Adventure Center
• Know tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, and Google Tools

If interested, you should contact Jane by email at Jane@IGAAdventureCenter.com or by phone at 123-456-7890

Class Objectives

Class Objectives

When I think of objectives the first thing that crosses my mind is "Students should be able to . . ." because that is how my objectives have to start for all of my lesson plans. But anyways, my objectives are:

• To become more familiar with Web 2.0 tools
• Be introduced to different types of social media
• Learning different tools to be able to use them in my classroom.
• Get used to blogging and be able to be creative with it. 

First Week

First Week

The beginning of the semester was a change for me. I am not used to classes not having due dates and an outline telling me what I need to complete and by when. This is my very first blog so I am still trying to figure out what I need to do and the settings. So things may be changing throughout the semester. I am excited to see what we are going to learn from this class. I keep hearing about Second Life but I don't really know what it is. I heard it was like Sims so I am curious as to if we are going to cover that in this class.