FINAL REFLECTION

Well, I guess I've reached the end of my 17 Things...A few thoughts:
1. I definitely think this was a worthwhile experience for any and all teachers. I really enjoyed learning how to use these tools, even though I won't necessarily use all of them in my class YET.
2. My favorite tools are the blog and the google cloud computing. I always thought blogs were sort of out of my league as far as technology went, but I realized how incredibly easy they are to use after this experience. My plan is to incorporate the blog idea into my classroom next year and utilize it as a great tool for homework and general communication with students outside of the traditional classroom setting.
3. I also found the google cloud computing to be incredibly helpful. I really think that part of our efforts as a "green" school should be to do as much paper-less work as possible. Google Clouds makes that REALLY easy, and the kids actually understood the benefits of using it and not having to save things to their email or a zip drive and loading it back up. Plus, it got rid of the excuse of "my printer was broken". If the paper is done, it's right there in the cloud.
As far as the rest of the items are concerned, I found them to be cool in general but probably not a lot of stuff I'm going to try to use right away in my classroom. However, if nothing else this showed me how many cool FREE resources there are out there just waiting to be used. You just have to search around for them a little bit and it takes care of itself.
At the end of the day, I'm really glad I did this and look forward to the Master Edition next year!

Maggie

Maggie

Voice Thread

I liked voice thread, but it wasn't very convenient for me because I don't have the video/microphone capabilities on either my home or school computer. If I had either of those, I imagine this would be pretty cool. It was easy to use and really easy to see everyone's comments and/or reactions.

Edmodo

I just finished making a post on Edmodo and I actually really liked the whole site. I don't facebook or "social network" at all, so I'm not exactly up to speed on that stuff, but I think Edmodo was really interesting and potentially really useful with my students. Considering how much they all facebook, I think they would really relate to the familiarity of the site. I also like how easy it is to update a calendar and post assignments.
This is definitely something I'm going to follow up with.

Wiki #2

Here is the new wiki I created, mostly because I think I screwed up the first one. I still agree with my post before that this sort of seems like more than I'd need or use in my classroom. I don't necessariy see this as being any different or better than a blog other than having all of the comments together on one page. I personally see it as too much of an opportunity for a student so sabotage someone else's post as opposed to simply commenting on it.
http://dignanswiki.wikispaces.com/

Thing 4 - Wiki

Here is my wiki, though I don't really see myself using this in my classroom. Though I recognize the value in being able to change the text in the site, I see it becoming more of a chaotic mess than anything else. Plus I could get seemingly the same ideas accomplished through the blog and website I created...
http://tomdignanswiki.wikispaces.com/

Thing 3 - Weebly Web

I spent some time today working on the weebly website. I have included the link below. In general, I thought it was really easy to start the process - uploading pictures, creating pages within the site, loading content, etc. It seems like this would be way easier than I thought. I could definitely use this in my classroom by setting up a blog that the students could use to respond to journal questions or novel topics.
However, the free service doesn't really offer any of the tools I would need to use this in my classroom. A lot of those things are only included in the version you have to pay for. The benefit is that you get your own domain name and add-ons like multimedia tools. So if I wanted to post a video for my students to watch before a lesson and comment on it, I'd have to be using the upgraded version that costs like $40 or something...At this point, I want to learn a little more about the process before I invest in it.
Here's the link to my website:
http://mrdignansclassroom.weebly.com/