THING NO. 22 Thoughts on Livebinders

The three educational binders I made were educational technology, teaching math, and special education. I included my educational technology binder. What I did with this binder is incorporate all the things I found the most useful within 23 things. I now have a binder to keep these things forever organized. I can build upon and share my findings as much as I need to. In the classroom I can keep binders for each subject area. I can begin to build up material that is useful and works for me. Sharing is made easy and so does the process of placing links in each tab of the binder. In addition, the tabs make it even more organized by breaking down the sites into specific subtabs. I have to say this beats storing up papers and books and well, literal binders. These livebinders are a virtual tool to relieve the classroom of clutter. As a teacher, I think I will use this site to place all my materials I find useful.

THING NO.21 Thoughts on Animoto

This was absolutely my favorite "Thing" to do! My entire family enjoyed this. We have made all kinds of videos. I will probably purchase a package that allows us to use this for full length videos so we can get creative with our music...and make music videos. For this project, I took my instagram (OMG do I love love this app!) photos and uploaded them to the site as well as a song of ours written by Kenneth Duncan and Josh Dunne. I created a cute little clip from our launch party. I think it turned out rather fitting and useful! In addition, this was so simple. I downloaded the application to my phone as well. I was very impressed how I was able to load pictures from any outlet to include my photo albums in facebook. Last, please take a took at my video. I placed it at the top of my blog :)

THING NO. 20 Thoughts on YouTube

Currently, YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine behind Google! I have recently discovered the many uses of this site concerning marketing. In the past, I simply viewed it as a storage place for videos, to include music or any other type of video. Yet, it is more than that as we all know. It has produced fame and generates popularity among viewers...when incorporated into social communities another factor plays part. Viewers who share their favorite videos on facebook and/or twitter for example create potential for videos to go viral.

YouTube videos are great teaching tools. Yet, having students engage in search techniques may not be a good idea. I find YouTube as the best asset on the web for tutorials and things of that nature. I think YouTube will be a large part of my classroom!

THE CHOICE - OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO [Billy Gilman and 18 Top Country Artists]

This song was written and produced by Mr. Philip Douglas. He is a co-writer on a large portion of the songs we own at AGSMP. His success on this project is an all around blessing. It is very purposeful. I encourage you to watch the video and download the song from iTunes. 1 download = 1 pair of shoes for children and individuals in need all over the world.

THING NO. 19 Thoughts on other Social Networks

I know you guys get tired of hearing my music stuff, but it is so much of what I have been doing lately... besides these classes for my graduate program. :) So, yes, I try to make my presence known in all Social Networks available. These communities are the heart of the music industry today. It has vastly evolved even from the day of cd sales. iTunes and YouTube's true impact on the revenue on cd sales is obviously a sore subject in the industry...or is it? Well, it is according to which side of the fence your on...and trust me it is the songwriters and publishers affected the most in the modern music world. If you can not keep up in all social medias, you are way behind in the game. I encourage everyone to add music artist to your page. Becoming their friend will keep you exposed to the latest trend of social media...there life depends on these communities to build fan bases and help brand their name.

I "make" myself use other communities outside of facebook. In fact, I am so grateful for the applications that link all of my communities together. When I update, they all are updated all at once. I feel like home is with facebook. There is simply so much it has to offers that I see no point in reinventing the wheel.

THING NO. 18 Thoughts on Social Networking

I created a Twitter account for this class earlier in the semester and placed a link on my blog for others to follow me on Twitter. Clearly, we are a very social culture and facebook has taken social networking to a level that no other social platform has been able to. I attended the Digital Media Music Summit last week at TPAC in Nashville, TN. I was able to gain insight about social media and found it absolutely remarkable how much of our lives are embedded into its existence.  It has become a science...or mathematical concept that business almost completely relies on...or at least the music business. Basically, learning the "system" of how facebook and other social medias work is and should be the goal of each and every artist and company representing an artist today.

If, and it is a huge "IF" I used a social media in the classroom it would be a blog or Twitter. I find that the limited accessible interaction that is capable of becoming more personal than educational is risky for a teacher. I am following Stanford University on Twitter with my account for this class. It is absolutely saturated in valuable information within Tweets. In addition, its current ongoing information that I, as the reader can now be exposed to that would not happen without social media.

In a classroom, ongoing communication is valuable for students, teachers, and parents. The best way is through a social network like facebook. The safest way seems like a blog. There are many ways that these medias are made private and limited for uses by teachers. If anything, It is great for a community of teachers to have and engage in.

Other social networks to be familiar and engage within include tumblr, google+ and foursquare to name a few!

THING NO. 17 Thoughts on Delicious

Bookmarking and tagging becomes organized with Delicious. I can think of so many things that make this site useful to my life. By habit, I will focus on research and gather sources for a paper or project with no intention of doing more than gathering it.  I may not come back to it for a week or longer. Bookmarking sites and filing those into a stack that is accessible when I come back to it seems so much easier.  In addition, If working on a group project, it would be easy to access each others sources. In business, I can take a project I am working on and gather all the best information I can find and file it so that I can come back to it at any date.

I began a stack named "Songplugger". I am in the process of hiring a songplugger for my publishing company. This is the hardest and most important task as my role as a publisher. I was able to view sites and then files those together by clicking on Delicious that I added to my tool bar. Delicious' resourceful bookmarking strategy goes steps beyond a simple journal and makes tagging another luxury of this tool. Tags are the best way to find material that is available on a certain subjects or in relation to key words that become tags by the author or user. For instance, when we searched educational technology many useful links were displayed. Clicking on a tag would serve the same way on this site. Comments were displayed to add further ratings on the bookmark or tag.

I see many uses for this in the classroom. As I mentioned, how useful it would be for me as a student above on research projects. It would be the same for any student. A teacher could make a stack for her classes with valuable resources that could be accessed from anywhere by any number of students.

THING NO. 16 Thoughts on Getting Organized with 2.0 Tools

Me? Organized? Ha! I am not sure there is a tool out there capable. I would love to see that day come before my days are over...Who knows maybe technology is the answer. I admit my iPhone in collaboration with my fiance' keeping me working towards the organization goal has helped over the last couple of years. I felt like this discovery was a repeat in some ways. I had already created a home page on iGoogle when we did Thing 10. It is my homepage that I keep and use.  iGoogle homepage really is such an asset for my business and personal life. I play around with gadgets often. I will add and take away. Usually, after realizing they are just taking up space I will remove as needed.  I keep what I find useful and that usually is calendars.It is for that reason I checked out 30 Boxes. I thought is was a pretty cute little tool. I have is displayed on my blog. When I forget things, it makes for a bad day. So, having checklist and calendars is a must. I use the one on my phone most often. I read on someones blog that the MSN calendar linked to their phone and you could view it from your device. That is what I need in a calendar. The one on iGoogle sends me an email reminder. All in all there are so many helpful tools for organization. It is just finding what works for the individual.

THING NO 15. Thoughts on Wiki

The concept of having a website where people can collaboratively author material of significance is a debatable measure concerning popularity. When I took part in the Discovery exercise I realized that I would need a lot of experience with this type of community in order to find it beneficial. Personally, I am lost in what makes the information in these communities accurate and reliable sources. If anyone can place information and edit the pages without regard to truth, I am not going to trust it. As I say this, all I can think is how often wikipedia comes up as the first source in a search for any given concept. I downloaded a dictionary application to my iPad months ago to use in the classroom because of that factor. As much as I may not mind to use wikipedia for something simple or personal. I would not rely on such a resource in a classroom or as any type of professional for that matter.

Furthermore, the Discovery exercise did not leave me with a clear mental picture of my role as the author or the reader. I have zero desire to get involved in a community of possible good information, yet clearly non administrative support by a source that makes the works within it reliable. Am I wrong? Maybe I am missing it!

THING NO. 14 Thoughts on Flow Charts and Mind Maps

Flowcharts and Mind maps are tools that makes concepts easily to understand or solutions easy to find. I think for people who utilize flowcharts in business or the classroom will find these web-based tools to bea  great asset to their career. As far as me personally, I lack that drive to find value in flow charts. So, I am left not having enough passion for this exercise to give an unbiased opinion. Basically, I am very impressed at how simple the tools are to use. The sites offer such easy ways to organize information that would be invaluable without the tactic of what a flowchart offers.

I played around with bubbl.com a little bit. I chose the chart for business goals. It is a great asset for the tools to be geared towards the need or subject matter. I found it very easy to manipulate the bubbles to create a colorful display of the topic I was covering, which was "Songplugging". Yes, it was organized. No, I probably will not use the tool own my own. Yet, knowing it is available for a project or presentation I may need to complete is a good thing. The sites offer a very easy way to make any topic look and appear as professional, detailed, and organized as possible.

THING NO. 13 Thoughts on the Benefits of Web-based Applications

First, simply being web-based is a benefit of these types of application period. I have struggled in the past trying to figure out how to share works with others. It is a complicated process that basically ends up with me emailing the documents to individuals. At best through a mass email.  Web-based applications  offer a form of freedom in my opinion from larger market products from companies like Microsoft and Mac. I worked on a PowerPoint presentation, simply playing around with the features on Zoho writer. It seemed very comparable to the software/desktop version. I mean, there were signs of limited tools and layouts but, for the most part it was comparable to what we are use to.

Working on the poster below was fairly simple. I created it in Google docs.  It seems like the tools are very limited on this application as well as my ability to enhance it through my own means. I would have loved to have included by logo but, was unable to figure out how to edit the white background of  the logo, which was white...ugh...So it stuck out like a sore thumb. My poster does not look professional. It turned out very cute though and I can see how much fun and useful this application would be in the classroom.

By the way, this is a real event. I would love to see some of my colleges attend our event at Bluebird Cafe'. :)

Join us for this event!