Apps!

App smackdown!
There are so many great apps out there, there is no way you can become familiar with all of them on your own! Everyone is interested in all different majors in our class here at Stockton, so we were able to see a large variety of apps. I picked the app Quiz Up which allows you to play trivia games on all types of topics. I related this app to teaching and how it could be a fun break for students to play games yet for it to still be educational.

Evernote is a site and an app where you can take notes on the go. You can add pictures and voice recordings to your note if you are rushing or to busy to write your thoughts out. As a teacher, with Evernote you can remind your students of upcoming assignments or tests. You can put the reminders in early and set when you would like that reminder to be sent out to your students. As a teacher Evernote is a great tool to help your students. You can pot pictures of the notes you put on the board. You can post the schedule for the week and any assignments that might be due. You can post lists and homeworks on Evernote. You can have students journal on Evernote. You can use the audio to post your lectures or your students can use it to get ready for an upcoming speech to present.
Onenote and Evernote are very similar but which one is right for you? Evernote using a three column design to make it easier to switch between tabs. There is a lot of the color white that can be overwhelming. Overall Evernote is easy and flexible to use. Onenote is a little tricky to get used to. The good thing about Onenote is that you can color coat your tabs to make it more organized. They are very different, yet very similar. The little things are what will decide which one is better for you.

 Chapter 2- The Connected Educator
 The typical teacher network is made up of curriculum documents, colleagues, popular media, print and digital resources, as well as family and local family. All these things are separate. A connected teacher network is made up of your personal learning network which has everything all out there to share with other people in the same field as you. Connected learning communities are made up of professional learning communities, personal learning networks, and communities of practice. Professional learning communities are all about continuous improvement, shared leadership, and school reform. It is about shared decision-making as an important component. Communities of practice are focused on building a shared identity and a collective intelligence created overtime. This is to bring many things and many ideas into one to create a collective idea to help all interested in one topic.

Social Media, think twice!

Social networks such as twitter, snapchat, and facebook, are not only for personal use but they can also be used for professional use. Social networking is a great way to get yourself and information you want other to know, out there into the world. We talked about how even though social networking allows you to make yourself known, there are pros as well as cons. For instance some pros for twitter would be you can advertise, you can let people know a little but about you in your bio, it is easy to access, but there are some cons such as lack of privacy because anyone can see your tweets for the most part, the app barely has any updates, and it is not ideal for visual content.



Snapchat is said to have the most engaged audience. They have almost 700 million snaps a day, A DAY! When using snapchat you can take a picture or video of whatever you would like and you can draw and or write on the photo or video whatever your heart desires and then you can share that picture or video with a few of your followers or with all of them by simply adding it to your story. Once you add it to your story then the picture will be shown on your story for 24 hours (do not worry you can always delete it). Snapchat also has a chat and video chat function, but once you exit the chat the conversation will be deleted. Snapchat recently released a Discover feature where many media organizations share information through snaps and anyone with snapchat is able to see them. Once you watch a snapchat it disappears but snaps within the discover feature do not disappear they are like a story, they are up for hours. On snapchat you can seek out jobs that could be for you and you can even turn your resume into a story.



Social media is a great personal thing to have but it is also a great thing that can be used in the classroom. Many mistakes can be made with social media. Once it is on the internet there is no getting it back. One mistake you post and you could ruin your education and future career. You do not want to post any illegal activities you may engage or previously engage in. If you want to experiment, keep it private. Bullying is a big issue in today's schools and now it is transferring into online cyber bullying and now schools are starting to incorporate punishment on cyber bullying into their handbooks. Cyber bullying includes trash talking your teachers on the internet as well, teachers have their ways of finding things out. Keep personal confidential information to yourself. With any new app updates you can share your location, but try not to be too overly specific. Do not use social media to lie, cheat, or plagiarize, your work must be your own work to claim as your own, give credit where it is due. These are just some of the mistakes we need to think about when on social media.


Think twice. Be careful what you share. Be careful what you say. Whatever you put on the internet is out there for anyone to see. You can let a burglar know when the perfect time is to attack your house. You could give someone the wrong impression of yourself and ruin you reputation without knowing it. Always be careful of scams. Not everyone is good, people are out there with bad intentions.

Cameron Brenchley turned social media into his job. He worked for the White House and oversaw their social media department. Anything and everything went through him. When asked about spelling errors he said "there are too many eyes that see it, we did not have any mistakes." When Cameron started studying in college he had no idea that he would work for the White House or even work with social media. Its crazy how things can change!

Chapter 1- Untangling the Web
First is was word of mouth and then it was discovering what someone left behind, then it led to photocopying and sharing materials, to blogging, and now Del.icio.us. Del.icio.us is a way for people to save their bookmarks online and have access to them on any computer. Also on Del.icio.us you can share your bookmarks publicly for all to see unlike any other website. It made the hunter-gather experience much simpler. Curation sites are there to help you as an educator. It all comes down to what you want to use and save and how and who you would like to share your information.

Google, Google, GOOGLE!

This week we learned how to find people that relate to what we want for our future on twitter. we learned there is something out there on twitter for everyone.

Google Drive has come a long way in nearly a decade of existence and undergone many changes, better ones that is.  It started off as a word processor and quickly jumped into the app world. They went from the name Writely to Google Docs to Google Drive and started to show everyone that it’s more than just a browser. With each name change came new capabilities. Google Drive allows you to search people so that you can collaboratively work on a single document and make changes from all different places. You can also link your Google Drive to your Gmail account and search any information you might need. Google Drive also teamed up with other apps to make things that might not be so simple just a little easier on your part. You can witch between sixty different languages and that is a great feature to have in our day and age where you constantly run in to multilingual people or having to work with people all over the world. These are just some of Google Drive’s most wonderful convenient capabilities.Google has given us this wonderful tool of Google Hangout. Google Hangout lets you connect with your community. You can create online interviews because google hangout is similar to skype. For example Sean Cook offers online coaching sessions through google hangout where he helps people with their resumes or career changes. Google hangout is good to hold meetings to work together whether it’s a class meeting online because the face to face class meeting was cancelled, or a teacher could hold a google hangout to help students having difficulty on their homework after school hours. Google hangout is a great way to extend your hospitality and give you a personal flair by offering time that you do not see every day. On top of google hangouts that teachers can use in the classroom, teachers should also become aware of Circles and Google plus. On circles teachers can create a circle for your classroom and share things related to their class. Within that one big circle for the classroom you can create circles depending on the subject matter as well such as reading and history in their own circles. Google plus allows students and guides them as to how to create their own circles and add people into it. They can work together on a live stream and chat with each other on their work.

There is a twitter out there for any and all interests. Twitter is part of my PLN otherwise know as personal learning network. I am an Education and Psychology major and I found a great picture with a quote that reads "Awesome leaders never remind people of the authority associated with their title. They lead through actions." This quote is something I will most likely hang up in my classroom one day for my students to see.