Fancy Nancy's Blog

I am a member of Facebook and I enjoy catching up with old and new friends, seeing pictures, staying in touch on a regular basis. I found so many people stopped sending cards and only emailing and then Facebook arrived and people stopped emailing.  I was fighting it as long as I could and then it peeked my interest because friends were not sending pictures of their children to me anymore and insisted I open up a Facebook page.  I am much more private with my page than so many other people who write their daily activities and personal feelings like it is their personal journal.  I truly use Facebook for a way to stay in touch with my friends and I still use their INBOX to write my personal comments in there but, I must admit I do like checking in daily to see who is doing what and any new pictures my friends may have posted.

My exploration of Classroom 2.0 was interesting.  The one I was really intrigued with was the one that shared ideas.  This is something I would like to spend more time with and think that I may find more use for it the more time I have to spend scrolling through and viewing different sights.  I did join and I am waiting to be approved.

The free poster printer was one of the more interesting things I found in my Google Reader.  With this link you can make posters of any size (max 20×20), save the poster and share with others.  There are many other things you can do with the poster and I think this could be very useful in the classroom to make your lessons and lectures more interesting and more creative without spending any money.

I really enjoyed pageflakes.  I was a little nervous about it at first and wasn’t really sure what it was all about (as usual), until I watched the videos. Once again I was amazed at how much information is out there and how creative you can be.  I loved the idea of personalizing your pages and having so many things to choose from.

I can see myself using this in the classroom for weather updates, current events happening, keeping myself organized with the TO DO list and reminder to my emails.  I will use pageflakes for many different things and I can see where I will be able to lose track of time just going through the many different items that you can choose from.  Pageflakes will definitely keep me on top of things that are going on around me without having to sit down and watch TV or read the paper or a scoop magazine.

I felt a little more comfortable with Google Docs because I do use Microsoft Word quite frequently and I see a lot of similarities between them.  I struggled trying to come up with an idea of something to share so I just played around with it a little bit.

I think one thing I could use this for is a presentation in our faculty meetings at school when we go to a conference and have to come back and share what we learned with out co-workers.  I think the spreadsheet is a good way to keep up with lists of things that need to be accomplished and would be a nice way to check things off.  The form is a nice way to jot notes down or send a note to a friend, co-worker etc via email by sharing it with them.  This way you can send an item to more than one person at a time.

I definitely can see myself using Google Docs in the future.

The video I found on Teacher Tube was a cartoon song about the 50 States and Capitals.  I thought this was an adorable way to teach young children about the States and Capitals in a fun way.  The song was very catchy! 

I can see where you can lose track of time scanning through all the videos posted on You Tube.  There were so many to choose from, educational, to funny and serious ones.  I really liked the bloopers from TV shows.  I was surprised at how many cooking videos there were.  I personally do “TAKE OUT” but, I can see how I may be able to test my cooking abilities by using You Tube at home.  My husband might not be too happy about that because he says I can’t cook but I may give it a shot anyway.

Podcasting was not one of the easier assignments and I had a few problems downloading my podcast into Podbean.  I actually used Audacity first and I couldn’t download so I went back and followed the step-by-step Windows audio.  I ended up using my Audacity tape after some “coaching” with our coach…thank goodness for her!!  I would like to use Audacity in my classroom for a project to share at Mother’s Day with my little ones.  They could each say something cute about their mothers.  Their voices (age 5) are so sweet and little that I think the mothers would LOVE it.

I previewed quite a few of the educational podcasts and found one about science interesting.  I think this podcast is a little advanced for my particular classroom however, I think I can make adjustments and bring it down to their level.  I found the movies, songs and other entertainment items fun and interesting. I subscribed to those too.  I think I can incorporate this into my classroom by spending more time searching and finding things that would be of interest for the younger children. I do think I will use this more in my personal life now that I really understand what it is all about.  I have an iTunes account and I use it to download music onto my iPhone.  I had trouble downloading music when I had an Ipod and I was thrilled when I got my iPhone and can download most music right from the phone itself.  The best invention ever—as I mentioned before!!!

I really enjoyed Libray Thing. I love to read especially if I’m sitting by the pool or it is raining outside.  My husband just gave me a Kindle and I do like a lot of things about it.  I still have to admit there are downfalls to the Kindle. Such as when I’m floating on a raft I would hate to drop it in the water, or if I am traveling and the battery dies and I don’t have the charger.  I do love how the books are easy access and much cheaper.  I still love strolling through a Barnes and Noble though and just grabbing whatever looks good to me.  I am a member of Good Reads and just joined this site so I may be able to expand my reads by what other people in my group enjoy and can share with me.

I think that Libray Thing will be great in my personal life to get opinions from others and I can also see this same thing happening in my professional life.

I have played around in delicious and opened my own account .  I am still playing around and trying to figure out what I really want to tag and I have deleted and added and changed names quite a bit.  I added K12Learning20 to my network but I am confused as to how to put sites out to share with others. 

I think this site is a great way to share ideas and many things with my co-workers and friends.  I started just searching for educational items but as I continued working in delicious I found my own interests too.  I love that you can type one word for a large search or many to narrow the search down and you seem to be able to find anything and everything you can imagine.