Google maps

I have been playing around with Google maps lately and the first thing that I noticed was that site knew exactly where I was located, which is kind of creepy in a way. My professor told us about how you can create your own map on Google, which I never heard of before.
I actually had a lot of fun creating my own personal map with locations that are important to me. I created a map mostly in a nostalgia form, places consisting of my childhood home, places I went to school, my apartments here in Tallahassee, and so far.
I realized creating this map is a convenient way of keep track of all of my friends' addresses. Sometimes you haven't hung out with a friend in a while and you forgot where she lives, but it would be a little awkward to ask her.
Check it out. Google maps have changed a lot since I last used it other then just for looking up addresses. There's a feature to look up images of the location (which I knew), there's also a ruler for you to measure distance between locations, you can print out map (this is a new feature for me to learn because I could never figure out how to print google maps and used mapquest instead)

Collaboration and Communication

A lot of people cringe when they think about doing group assignments/projects, myself included. I was reading an article called "The 'digital native' in context: tensions associated with importing Web 2.0 practices into the school setting" and saw a section about collaborative work. Some students mentioned using social media sites to communicate each other school assignments and it made me wonder why we don't have that feature on our Blackboard site. We have discussion boards and whatnot, but not many go on that part of Bb because we often don't realize that someone posted something there or we just don't utilize the resource. I think chat would be an interesting feature to add to school and although (like the article mentioned) some people might be inappropriate, but I think being in college and having a level of maturity, we wouldn't abuse the chat features

Article:

Crook, C. (2012). The 'digital native' in context: tensions associated with importing Web 2.0 practices into the school setting. Oxford Review of Education, 38(1), 63-80. doi:10.1080/03054985.2011.577946

Symbaloo

Symbaloo is definitely one of the more useful tools I've experienced so far. I enjoyed it so much that I even set it as my homepage.
Symbaloo allows me to create a tile for each of the websites that I frequently visit, such as, Facebook, Blackboard, Twitter, and so forth.
I can also create tabs for different sites that I visit. For example, Symbaloo created a photography tab that has a tile for each of the popular photography websites. This feature is useful for people who has multiple different interests that they would like to keep organized.
Take a try out with Symbaloo. You might find it useful!

Edmodo

I got an account with the class code in Edmodo. I got an account with a student account and a teacher account to see the perspective the two. Visually, there isn't any real difference between the two account (except perhaps the control aspect, after all, you wouldn't want your students to change the assignments or grades)
I like the fact the website allows the teacher to interact with the students outside of the classroom. I certainly could have used that when I was in grade school and didn't understand the homework assignments or needed tips on how to study for a test.
I'm not too sure if I like the parental access. I'm all for parents to acknowledge education in the sense of progress reports and teachers allowing them to know any difficulty that their child might be having with school. But parents do not need to know every move their child makes, they need to be allowed some freedom and a sense responsibility.

While Blackboard is useful for a college student like me, I can't help but be a little attracted to Edmodo. You have your due dates and assignments and a way to talk to your teachers. In addition, you get badges! Perhaps it's the little kid in me, but I enjoyed that I received a cupcake badge because I joined the group. That's a great incentive for younger children to do the assignments and such.

Another aspect of the site is that the student can add their career goals and their type of learning style, however I would have liked to see some sort of quiz to determine their learning style

Scoop it

For my Knowledge/Sharing project, I decided to to use the following websites: Scoop it, Tumblr, and Twitter.

I'm tracking through Scoop it, but I'm using Twitter and Tumblr to get some PR for my Scoop it account.
Intially my experience was a little frustrating because I couldn't quite figure out the website, but I think I've gotten the hang of it.

I think I am going to keep the same topic for this class. For my community paper, I participated in cooking forums and so it's only natural that for this project that the topic would be, of course, cooking.

I am curating links from other users about interesting recipes that I would like to try out this summer.
Any advice/feedback would definitely be appreciated!

Distance Education

This week we had to read a few articles in class. One of the articles I read was Open Educational Resources: Enabling universal education. I resonated with this article because when I was in undergrad, I hated online classes because they made me feel that I was not getting the most out of my education. However, as I progressed into my graduate program and as I took online classes, I was able to understand the potential that comes from taking these classes. I am paying to get a piece of paper at the end of my degree, I am choosing to learn.
A few years ago, a teacher told me about free course information and materials that Universities were rolling out and I was able to access them. I was able to learn new information in a direction I chose to go in. For universities to offer essentially free courses online, people will be more informed and more knowledgeable and that is a right that everyone deserve to have.


Article:
Caswell, T., Henson, S., Jensen, M., & Wiley, D. (2008). Open Educational Resources: Enabling universal education. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 9(1), 1-11

Flickr

This week, I decided to try Flickr. I may have opened up an account years ago and probably didn't have any use for it.
I was initially annoyed with the sign-up process because you had to get a Yahoo account first and then you can sign up for Flickr by using your Yahoo account.

But all that aside, I like how the site welcomed you by showing a video of how to use the website. (Although the user-interface was a little bit more simpler than most websites that I've came across)

I clicked on the Explore tab and then clicked on The Commons. I searched for Florida State University and narrowed down my search to the "All Creative Commons"

I decided to include this picture for the blog

Photo by https://www.flickr.com/photos/artiewhite/

I started looking for more images in different categories and I had a ton of fun with it. I didn't realize how much free pictures I could use for my projects, but I did have to be aware that some of these images are free to be used unless it is for profit.