Thing 12

I explored Picasa Web albums and created a profile. It is a Google tool that runs through your google email account. You can create photo albums and share them with friends and family. You have the option of making yourself searchable by name as well. By clicking on the link you can create your own album. There are different categories you can fill out: about me, occupation, schooling, and much more. When putting up pictures you can tag people and put a caption under each picture. Comments are allowed or can be disabled under settings. Searching through other people's photos that are public are a good way to find images that you would like to upload to your computer. It reminds me very much of Flickr. I feel like Picasa Web albums can be used to share photos of your classroom and students with parents to keep them involved in their child's learning. It is also a good way to store photos because you get up to 4,000 photos with the free subscription.

In the Google Translate tool, you can translate any language to another language. By clicking on the link you can see that I chose to go from english to spanish. As you type, it will change the translation word by word. I found this really neat because you can go immediately to another language from the one you selected. I feel like this could be used as a teacher if you have a student that does not speak very much english. This can help you and the child communicate. 

Thing 11

While searching through different search tools to find RSS feeds, I found one that I liked and one that I did not like. Google Blog Search is my favorite of all the ones I looked through. I was very organized and did not have a bunch of articles and information as soon as you go to start searching blogs. You can simply put in a keyword or words to search for information. I might have just-so-happened to like it more because I like anything that has to do with Google. It was the easiest of all the tools I have found.

Topix is a website with new feed about politics, the world, sports, and entertainment. It is very cluttered, and I didn't find much interest in it. It had a lot of stuff about politics on the homepage. Politics aren't really my forte, so it was annoying to me. Syndic8 was the most confusing to me. As soon as I had gotten on the site i didn't know what to do next. It wasn't put together very well either.

Overall, I really liked the Google Blog Search. I feel like it really is the way to go when you blog search because there are so many options as to what to choose from. The Google search engine itself is also a good way to find blogs. One blog I found through Google Blog Search was written by a 1st grade teacher named Kristen. I found the blog really useful. She blogged about things she did in the classroom and took pictures of all her classroom decorations. I really enjoyed it. You can also view the other blogs that she follows which is a good way to explore the blogging world through educational blogs.

Thing 10

When creating an RSS reader through my Google email account, it connected the blogs I am already subscribed to in Blogger. With the Google reader you can read new updates from your favorite websites and blogs directly through your live feed. I like this tool because you do not have to go directly to the site and search for new content. This is an easy way to bypass a lot of wasted time.

I think this technology is a good idea for teachers to use with older children that have online assignments to do research with or look at different websites for homework. There is a "trends" tab that allows you to track how many blogs you have read and the percentage of your live feed that you have read in your updates. You can look at it by the last thirty days, time of day, and day of the week. This can be used by teachers daily to check on what the students have read for their assignments and how often they have read.

I could use this technology to help parents stay up to date on my classroom blog. They can have the option of subscribing to the class's blog and getting updates through the Google reader instead of searching through the pages of the blog to see what has been updated. This is a good way for the parents to get all those reminders I put in the blog daily. This will keep parents informed and will then have no excuse as to why they did not see information the child needed for the next day at school. No more complaining parents about their child not bringing papers home because it will not matter! They will have all the information at their finger tips anywhere they go.

Thing 9

Image generators can be used in numerous ways. I think they are a great way to make learning and instruction in the classroom fun! You could make signs of instruction to put on a PowerPoint in the classroom to enhance the learning experience, or you could have a "Be Aware" sign like the one below to project on the board at the en of class to remind students of things they need to know for the next day of class. Image generators could also be used in your every day life through a personal blog, or print them out and hang them up. I found that customsigngenerator.com is a great website to make all sorts of custom images. These are a few I had made through the site.

The image generator with Dummies Book Cover Maker is a website that allows you to make for dummies book covers that you can save to your computer and do anything you would like with it, in this case I changed it to newbies. The image generator with Sign Builder allows you to make different road signs and caution signs. You can change the Text and Color of the sign as well as add an image to the sign.

Thing 8

I used the Big Huge Labs website to create the image above. A mashup is a Web 2.0 tool that you can use in multiple ways. You can take images and create them into something fun that you can put on a blog or website. I think this is a great way to take a picture and make it into something interesting. When making this image of a jigsaw puzzle, I uploaded a picture from my desktop into the browser. It turned it into a jigsaw puzzle which is fun and interesting.

I think mashups could be used in the classroom as well as in your every day life. You can use these in the classroom to make learning fun. With the jigsaw puzzle you could use it in your classroom blog. I would put a picture of the class and turn it into the puzzle on the homepage. That is fun for parents to look at.

I think photo sharing online is important for history purposes. When you put an image online of an event, you are sharing with the rest of the world that memory in your life. A picture can say more than a typed paragraph about a moment in time. Photo sharing online is a good way to communicate with relatives and scholars. When looking through pictures that other people share on the Web, you can learn about things you would not have learned about otherwise.

Thing 7

Exploring Flickr I found a lot of ways to find pictures and share them with others. You can create an account and upload pictures for free. This is great for photographers because it puts a copyright on their work. You can search photos through different tags on a tag list or in the search bar. Each photo can have numerous tags in which will also give you ideas as to other images you can find on the site. You do not have to have a Flickr account to view photos and share them.


When putting pictures on your Flickr account, you can adjust the pivacy settings where it is public or private. It can show your real name and geological location of where the picture was taken if you wish. One thing I thought was interesting was most of the pictures I had found told what camera was used to take the pictures. Some pictures are a part of different groups. You can also look through the groups and find different pictures that are relevant to the group's title.


I looked up the tag "balloons" in the search bar. A lot of pictures with different types of balloons came up. There was anything from birthday balloons to hot air balloons. The picture above was taken by Chris Coleman. I love the reflection of the balloons in the water.

Under the picture there are comments from various flickr users. It shows the date of when the comment was posted as well as who posted it. You can also look up pictures by date as well. Clicking on the differnt users' names in the comment bar is a good way to find other people who take similiar pictures to the one you have found. This is a great way to find and share images.