Final Reflection

Final Project

How To Be a Digital Native

Carly presented the idea to us and I immediately loved it. It gave us power to not only show what we've learned throughout the semester, but to also condense it into things we got the most out of.

Final PLN Report

I have a few pages in my PLN, so instead of taking a screen shot of the home page, I made a little slide show to show all of the pages.

Home Page

A few of the buttons I have on my Home Webmix are Facebook, Blogger, Twitter, Delicious, Youtube, and Gmail. I use these often if not daily.

• SchoolTube and TeacherTube- These are pretty much like YouTube, but centered around the school and learning environments. I plan on using these to enhance my lessons when I start teaching.
• Glogster- This site is great. It allows you to make a digital poster of anything you like. You can use videos, sounds/music, pictures, and text. This site is a great way for students to spice up those boring poster board presentations and I definitely intend to use them.
• Evernote- Instead of writing everything down the old fashioned way, Evernote allows you to type up and store your notes online. You can access it through the computer or via the iphone/ipod app. I think this is a very handy tool for the students who either want to go green or think writing things by hand is too time consuming.
• iTunes U-This is where you can find podcasts to listen to for school. This is a wonderful thing for students and teachers to use. Not only does it allow for easy access, since most every person these days uses iTunes, but it allows for teachers to peruse what others have created and use them to help with their lessons. Plus, podcasts can be listened to any time, anywhere.
•  CUE- This is a nonprofit corporation that looks to advance students' education using technology. I figured, their goals are similar to mine, they have got to be useful. They offer workshops and events for educators to attend.
• Literature Map- This is a website where you can type in the name of an author and a group of other authors that are similar to the one that was typed in appears. I would personally use this, but I'll  encourage my students to use it. It's a great way to expand your reading circle and even possibly your vocabulary.
• The Writing Center- I'm going into the English field of teaching and this website is going to be absolutely wonderful. It's a handbook on how to avoid plagiarism. 
• ReadWriteThink- Another useful English/Language Arts tool. The site looks to provide the best materials for students, teachers, and parents to use in their teaching and learning journeys.

Twitter for Teachers

I had ever used Twitter before this class and never intended to use it. I was still even skeptical about its usefulness despite Dr. Strange's speech. However, once I started exploring it and watching the people I was following, my mind started changing. Of course, I was thinking "There are SO many people who use Twitter, how do I know who I should follow, other than the ones Dr. Strange provided?" Well, my next page is all about Twitter for Teachers.

• Educational Hash Tags- Provides a list of hashtags that are education related.
• Twitter4Teachers- A Wiki page that lists tons of educators who use Twitter. It's organized by the subject they teach. This helps with the overwhelming feeling of who to follow.
• EduTwitters Guide- This is a blog that helps educators keep in the loop with technology.
• Educators on Twitter- Another helpful list of educators that use Twitter.
• How to use Twitter to grow your PLN- The name is pretty self explanatory. However, this is great. This helps make Twitter seem more useful in my mind.
• Liveblinder- This is also labeled as "An Educator's Guide to Twitter". Yet another useful tool for those who might find Twitter a little stupid.
• 30 Newest Ways to Use Twitter in the Classroom- Again, self explanatory, but this is exactly what I need. I've mentioned in other posts that I would like to incorporate the distractions like Facebook and Twitter into my lessons. This knocks out Twitter.