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Twitter in Education---PowerPoint Module

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Twitter in education

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Twitter: Emerging Blog Post #3

The name of the technology I am exploring today is Twitter. For those who don’t know what Twitter is, I would describe it as status updating or mini blogging. All you do is write something 140 characters (words and spaces) or less and post it. Twitter is used for lots of things from entering contest to sharing your words of wisdom.



This is the box where you type what you want to tweet.



What Twitter does is it allows you to connect with a lot of different people and see what they are up to. However you can make your profile private, if you are not comfortable with anyone who is anyone reading your personal tweets. Twitter is useful when you want to see what the British monarchy is up to, to what your mother is cooking for dinner. Many celebrities have Twitters, if you wanted to see what Britney Spears is up too just go to http://twitter.com/#!/@britneyspears and you can see the recent tweets from Miss Britney Spears herself. Also if you want to you can mention @britneyspears in a tweet and Britney might read the tweet and respond (if you get lucky).



There is the view from my profile. You can see all of my recent tweets.

I personally think Twitter is wonderful to use. It’s very easy to set up an account just enter your email, come up with a user name and password and your all set. I use it to update with whatever I’m doing that day and even enter to win tickets through Reka the DJ on RadioNow 100.9. Here are some screen shots of my adventures on Twitter. 

Some tips I have for my fellow bloggers, just have fun with Twitter. Follow whomever you want whether it is Bon Jovi or you best friend. Follow me at @shauna_fleenor.



These are a few tweets from the people that I follow. You can also see the trends (what people are talking about) in the United States and some suggestions on who I should follow.







Emerging Technology #2: Picnik

Have you ever wanted to enhance the color of the leaves or change part of your picture black and white but leaving some color? The technology I will be exploring in today’s blog post is the wonderful website called Picnik. Picnik is a website used for photo enhancing and editing.

You can do many things with Picnik even if you don’t buy the full version. You can change the color, add clip art, frames, and words, touch up someone in the photo and many more features. What the program does is change the photo in any way you select. If you want to add your name to the photo just click “Create” then “Text” and select from varies types of font and add them to the photo. During many holidays Picnik allows special effects i.e. snow for winter for font that goes along with the season.

Attached to this blog are a few photos I have edited with Picnik. I learned to use this technology all on my own. I would just apply an effect and if I didn’t like it I would not save it to edit the image. The website is very user-friendly and tells you exactly what effects are free.

If you plan on using Picnik I would recommend taking time to wonder through each of the effects. They all benefit photos in some ways and help make them look even better than before. You can access the site at http://www.picnik.com/.

    



My cousin Lauren. This is a portrait I took for her mom.



Farris wheel.





My twin sister Sarah and my cousins Madison and Monti at Christmas last year.



You can also make collage on Picnik.

 

An artist photo of my cap and diploma.



The Next Generation

Today at 12:45 PM my cousin Brandon and his wife Leah welcomed their second son Ryder Eli into the world. Ryder is only 10 months younger than his older brother Carsyn Lucas. Both of these little boys will enter a world of Education much different than the one myself and their parents entered.

I plan to help make the world of education they do enter, one of the best they can have. I want them to like going to school and not have to face some of the things other students have faced. I want their generation to be able to feel like they can do anything and not be put down.

Thier generation is the future. As future educators we should always be working to improve thier world and helping pursue any dreams they may have.

This blog wasn't part of an assignment. It was just something I wanted to share. :)





Ryder and I- 10/18/10



Carsyn- 10 mths







I hope this works :) Emerging Technology #1: Podcasting

     For my first emerging technology we were asked to explore the world of podcasting. A Podcast is an audio file about anything you want it to be about. Podcasting allows anyone with a voice recorder to record anything they want and then post it to the web. It allows people to  hear you instead of read what you have to say. I believe it makes things feel a little more personal.
     In my podcast below I gave some useful tips on how podcasting is useful in the classroom. One personal way I can see it begin useful in the real world is for people who is blind. I have two aunts who have been blind since childhood. They both have a system on their computer that read websites, papers ect. to them but with a podcast they could get the real effect out of what the author/podcaster is saying and it doesn't sound like a robot.
     I've used similar recording devices when I was in high school in the Television Broadcasting class, so audacity wasn't hard to use. I believe the program is very user-friendly and easy to work.
     Here is the link to my very own, very first podcast: https://oncourse.iu.edu/access/content/user/shrfleen/Shauna_Podcast_Module4.mp3. The subject of my podcast is about using podcast in the classroom and another technology called Skype. I hope you enjoy. If you have any questions on how to use audacity feel free to post a comment on my blog and I'll get back to you.
     

Social Bookmarking

Feel free to look at all of my useful site: http://www.delicious.com/shrfleen

My Critical Thinking paper-- module 2

Twitter and Worlde in the Classroom

Technology is a wonderful thing. It helps us stay connect with family, research topics without going to the library to get a book and in some ways can improve our lives. Out of the top twenty five articles I chose two that really hit home, “25 Ways to Teach with Twitter” by Sonja Cole and “Why Worlde?” in the TL Advisor Blog written by Steven W. Anderson. Throughout this essay I will be using the articles to critically think about technology in a classroom setting.

In “25 Ways to Teach with Twitter” Sonja introduces the reader with the basics of Twitter. I personally have a Twitter account that I use every day. I use my Twitter for many things from telling the Twittervers what I’m going to be doing today to asking if any movies are good. Sonja suggests that teachers use twitter to look for suggestions on lessons to readings and answers to some of their professional questions such as “Is there a way to find out when your teaching certificate expires? (Cole, 2009).” She makes many other points on ways to use Twitter as a teacher.

Since I use Twitter on a daily basis I understand how Sonja thinks teachers should use their Twitters, I only ask myself “Is there anyway students and teachers could work together on Twitter?” I believe that students could take to the Twittervers and ask questions much like their teachers or use it in some way to connect back to the classroom. A possible way to have a teacher use Twitter in their classroom with their students could be for example have them correct a grammar tweet much like my Daily Oral Language I did in school. Instead of using paper and pencil the students would use their Twitter.

I chose the article “Why Wordle?” because I have personally worked with Wordle in the past and loved it. Last year during my bridge class our professor introduces us to Wordle. We used Wordle to come up with key words that describe the types of teachers we want to be, types of students we would have and why we wanted to be teachers. After we entered the key words and created the design we could see what was really important to us. It really opened up our eyes to the similarities and differences we all had.

Steven says “The possibilities are endless really (Anderson, 2009).” This is completely true. In the article he used tweets from teachers with ways they use twitter. Many say to teach vocabulary, main points, concepts, and key words. As a teacher you could take time before each class ends to have the student make their own Wordle document with what they think is the important things you talked about today or work together as a class to form a class wide one. Either way by the re evaluating what they learned I feel they will be more likely to remember things. Also you could review the Worlde document before the class next day or at the end of the week summarizing what you’ve talked about.

Using Worlde to summarize or re evaluate what you’ve learned in my opinion is a great way to get students to have a little bit of fun while remembering. However I believe that if Worlde is not used properly than it will have no impact at all. Just giving students random words to think about without even discussing does nothing for them. Students should be involved also to increase class involvement. If students don’t feel like they are worth anything and are just learning stuff because they have to without any explanation they are not going to care about school. 

      Both articles give excellent examples on ways to use the internet in and out of the classroom. I personally believe that if teachers incorporated the new technology that most of their students are using then students would be more interested in class and the topics they are learning about. It is up to the teacher though to make sure that the use of these technologies is used appropriately and not used to just waste time.

Work Cited

Anderson, S.W. (2009, October 9). Why Worlde? [Blog message]. Retrieved from

http://techlearning.com/blogs/24518

Cole, S. (2009, June 4). 25 ways to teach with twitter. Retrieved from Tech and Learning

website: http//techlearning.com/article/20896

A little about me and the creation of my blog

Hi. I'm Shauna a sophomore at IUPUI majoring in Secondary Social Studies Education. My ultimate goal is to be a high school principal someday. I'm obsessed with my Facebook, Twitter and anything else I find on the wonderful world called the Internet. Enough about me though.

This first blog is going to be about the creation of my blog. It was actually very easy creating the blog on blogger. Coming up with the name however was a little tricky. I was watching Keeping Up With the Kardashians and decided that since the blog is about Web 2.0 and education I could call my blog Keeping Up With Education.

My suggestions to my fellow students who are creating their blogs is to just go with the flow, its really easy and doesn't take to much time. You should also have an idea of what your blog is going to be called so your not like me and thinking really hard about it.



This is me and my twin sister Sarah at the Indians game sponsored by SAPB. (I'm the one with lighter hair.)