Final Reflections on ETEC 527

As I have journeyed through this Web 2.0 technology class, I can honestly say that I have learned about new tools and how to incorporate them into my career. I have a new found outlook on web 2.0 technologies as I have only scrapped the surface with them, I am looking forward to advancing my skills with them. It is incredibly nice to be out of this bubble of my comfort zone and willing and wanting to research new technologies. I have always had the mindset of looking at technology and just focusing on it in my classroom. I have found that this is so limiting for my future. Of most of the technologies we have utilized in this course, I mostly will not be using in my classroom. They will be used for professional development and professional communities. The power of teacher word of mouth is amazing because we all have a main goal and that is to want to help each other. Also, what better way to learn about new technologies than by those who are utilizing them in their classrooms and how. I can say that I have found several useful tools and website via Twitter based off of what others have shared. Another great thing that I have really looked forward to with Twitter are those conferences that I may not be able to attend, but can stay up with "whats new" via tweets. I have a new-found love for Twitter whereas I have always told myself I will never use it...I find myself on it almost daily, as it is a work in progress. With using Protopage, I have introduced it to my campus, but also to my district with plans to assist there with incorporation. This will be used not only for professional communities, but also for my classroom. I plan on introducing it to my students and creating pages for my student organizations. This is a great way to organize important pages and widgets for my classes based on what they are involved in. In working with YouTube, I am blown away with all that can be done with YouTube as my only involvement previously were to look at funny videos and videos to teach math. I really enjoy creating channels and playlists to share with students as they can subscribe to my channels. I plan on incorporating this in my Math intervention class because students can use the videos in there for extra assistance. A major outcome with this course is my involvement in Schoology. Not only was it being introduced into our district as the time I was beginning this class, but I have engulfed myself in the program. While doing some research for my final project I spoke with their customer service to answer some questions. I told the representative what I was doing and she encouraged I send my video to them so they could view it and share amongst their community. With all of the experience I have had in this classroom, I am encouraged and excited to get out there and learn new technologies. My prior thoughts on professional communities had been that I have to search through masses of posts just to find maybe A helpful tool, whereas now I am wanting to search those communities and share and I don't find it as a waste of time. I can say that this class has taught me a lot about technology and it's uses not just for the classroom. I have learned to use resources that are out there and I have a new vision for my future career as a Program Director.

Reflection on my Digital Footprint

I have searched my name many different ways (including my maiden name, Maxey) and even Martin is a very common name, I did find a few items. I can say that my blog showed up as well as some of my videos in YouTube. This is a transition from my digital footprint investigation a couple of months ago. I am excited to see myself pop-up in a positive way because this is something I pride myself on in my classroom. I am continuously telling my students that I want them to be careful and I can honestly see that my footprint is what I am happy with. With wanting to move forward in my career, I am happy to see my name in a positive way and as something that is useful to share with people.

Web 2.0 Technology Professional Development

As I come to conclusion with my Web 2.0 Technology class, I will focus my future on not being scared to explore things that I am not familiar with. I have really enjoyed finding new tools to work with, so much to the point where we are implementing several of the tools I have discovered in this class on my own campus. Moving forward, I am going to focus on keeping up with new and innovative technology by attending a few conferences. The TCCA, TCEC and TCEA are all on my list to attend. Although I did miss a conference just recently, I was able to keep up with it by following it on Twitter and having my tech-spec send me snap shots of a few vendors that I should check out. Twitter was a tool that I really was hesitant to use, but have a new found happiness with it. It is a great resource to use for keeping up with what is going on in the classroom and new idea to incorporate in the classroom. I have followed groups such as eLearning Industry, EdTechFam, Schoology, EdSocialMedia, KidsDiscover, WeAreTeachers, MindShift, EducatorInnovator, TCEA, just to name a few that I have found helpful with keeping up with new innovations. Another great way to keep up with technology is through Schoology. Within the platform, you can join communities to share ideas with other educators. Also, there has been a website that I have recently fell in love with is a blog by Amy Mayer called FriedTechnology. This website reviews new technology and creates discussion over topics that are relevant to the classroom. I really enjoy her posts as she covers some pretty interesting topics. All of these that I have posted are new ways that I have discovered either through my exploration for this class or by communicating with collegues and coming across them. These are all ways that I would not normally seek out professional development opportunities to explore new web 2.0 technologies. Outside of these listed above, I can always resort to my district as we have online as well as in-person professional development. With my district, I also have access to Region 4 which offers a plethora of professional development. I have really enjoyed my searches thus far and can't wait to see what I come across next.

TAG, You've been bookmarked!

Booking marking websites that you frequent often has been utilized to make the online experience even more easier. By the click of a button, your favorite website shows up without having to type a single thing. But what if you are not on your friendly computer and now you actually have to remember that website address? Have no fear, Diigo is here. Diigo has been created as a web 2.0 technology that allows a user to access unlimited amount of personal bookmarks they may favor. Not only can you access it from any computer, but you can also organize your site by tags for each site to allow an easier find of all of your bookmarks by the tags you assign to the site.  One of the great uses that I have found with Diigo is that not only are my bookmarks accessible from anywhere now, but I can also share with people specific finds. This is a great aspect as I created a group and plan on sharing with my department at work for an online collaboration of sites that we all frequent as well as suggestions for our classes. Upon beginning to work with this site, I was so impressed that I shared it with several colleagues at work that fancy new technology just as I do. When my tech-spec or myself come across something new, we tend to spend a conference period or two playing around with it. I can honestly say, instead of working on grades or lesson plans, we spent spent an entire conference period playing around on Diigo. It is rough sometimes being introduced to new technology because so many of the items we are introduced to is just a replacement of something else we have already learned, but this one is one we both decided it needed to be shared at one of our monthly trainings that she hosts. Well, back to my experience with Diigo, another aspect of the program I enjoyed working with is Diigolet. Diigolet allows you to put it on your bookmark bar on your current browser and click on it while visiting a website you would like to bookmark. Upon pushing on Diigolet, a pop-up box shows up with options that you can perform on the page. It allows you to highlight on the webpage, make notes, mark the page as read later, and bookmark the page to your Diigo account. This is really a cool task because the notes and highlights that you make are not public, but for your reference. This is really great for the type of person I am because I will find a website and see something really neat, email the site to myself, then after a few days revisit the site and wonder why I ever was looking at it. I regularly come across interesting articles that I want to read, but just don't have the time and Diigo allows me to not only bookmark the site, but to also mark as read later and make a note as to why it may be interesting or highlight something that I found interesting. I highly recommend this website and can honestly say that Diigolet is not only on my personal computer, but on my work computer and tablet. It is nice to be introduced to web 2.0 technologies so often as I continue through my graduate school journey and this one will definitely be a technology to stay in my tool belt!

Do you Aggregate Pages?

Aggregating pages are an online digital dashboard where a person can add links to pages they wish to highlight and other gadgets offered through the site. I like to think of this as a teachers desk. A teachers desk consists of a computer and all the components she/he may need to complete the days objectives. The online digital dashboard are like the teachers desk, just online. The teacher can post different websites and gadgets that are useful and interesting.

This week I reviewed two websites (Netvibes and Protopages) that utilize aggregating pages. Both sites have a free option when creating your page and both pages serve as the same function. I chose to use Protopage because I found it was easier to navigate and I like the ease of use when it came down to customizing my page(s). A feature I did like is that I can have tabs to customize the content on that specific tab. In hopes of moving forward and implementing this into my classroom and activities I a involved with, I could create a tab for each of my classes. I would create a digital design tab, BPA tab (student organization), yearbook tab, and possibly a type of me tab. This was I could send students according to either the organization they are in or the class they are in for resources outside of the classroom. A unique feature that I could also add to each page, that I found VERY useful, was not only can you add a twitter feed of your posts, but you could add different twitter handles that are being talked about. This would be very neat to incorporate for each tab according to the subject.

I really do like being able to use a single platform where I can pretty much link all of my web 2.0 technologies all together in one central location. It can sometimes become overwhelming when you have to think all of the technologies you use online. This will really help my online teacher desk stay organized.

Check out my Protopage by clicking here or copy and paste the following link: http://www.protopage.com/educationismotivation

Youtube Adventure

This week I learned more about Youtube than I ever have. I had no idea about basically creating a playlist of favorite videos that people can view of yours. This is a whole new concept for me an I cannot wait to implement in my classroom. I could have videos saved to my channels and have students view them and create discussion questions from them. Also, I can use them for when students are out of the classroom due to whatever issues, they can use them to get caught up or even supplemental videos to assist with classroom materials. You never really realize how helpful Youtube can be, until you explore it. I use to believe that Youtube in my classroom was dangerous because students using the program incorrectly, but this is merrily a monitoring issues. There are so many resources out there and not using it is almost a disservice to my classroom now that I know so much more about it.

#TwitterExploration

I have had some experience with Twitter and I can say that that experience has made me hesitant using the technology. My two experiences were both educational and caused me to either close my account or write a physical statement of what happened.
In the first instance, I tried something that I saw at a conference and tried what was stated in our conversation about Twitter called back-conversation. Let me just start out by saying, when you teach middle school students, their mindset is completely different online. Somehow inappropriate links became attached to the site and I had to shut the site down...I didn't know at the time how to control personal settings and instead of having my job on the line, I just closed the account immediately. I have to say, this also made me see my students in a whole new light as they tagged items from Twitter and Instagram. Basically, their digital footprint made me see them in a new light.
The second instance, was for a student organization that I am a board member for. We had the account hacked and with it being a student organization and advisors, parents and students having access to it, it did not look good. We were not able to shut down the Twitter account   because a previous board member had access to it and we were unable to get ahold of that person. We had to beg and plead and go back and forth with Twitter and finally able take down the site.
So from these two experiences and of course Lifetime movie network, I have been hesitant in tweeting. However, I can say that after going to National competitions with my students I had met many people who gave me their Twitter handle and had access to many different resources. I loved having access to this one teacher out of Ohio who posted different Photoshop techniques weekly. I have found after creating my account, I searched some of the reviewed handles and found some great links that I am now following. This is one of the benefits of Twitter..you are connected to some amazing resources, we just have to be weary of the consequences if not monitored.

Digital Footprint

Digital footprint is a topic that has become more relevant with the increase of technology, a topic that I believe needs more attention. Search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing have made it very easy to look up information about any person or business. I always bring this discussion up in my classroom because I teach middle school students. All the chatter is about who is doing what, did you see what so and so posted, she looked retched in that picture, etc... This generation has such a different mind-frame than I did at their age. From my experience, they think in the here and now. This is why this topic should be discussed more, they have no idea how this could affect their future.

After searching for my name, I found myself to be a little lucky. I didn't really find anything that pertained to my name as Brooke Martin. I guess I could call myself a little fortunate because my name recently changed after I got married. Searching under my married name, Martin, I found several links to the following topics:

Web search

• Brooke Martin Photography, she is quit talented
• Brooke Martin, a 14 year old girl who created a dog treat company called ICPooch
• Brooke Martin, a news anchor in Indianapolis
• I did find my blog that I have for my classes. 
• I also found my name linking to my student organization under their board members

Image search

• I did not find anything in reference to myself

Video search

• I saw a lot of Brooke Martin on Vine, but I do not have a Vine account

When searching for Brooke Maxey, my maiden name, I found the following:

Web search

• A lot of links to social media, all of which were not my accounts
• I did find several links for a blog that I wrote when I was an intern at Gallery Furniture for winter break in college.
• I also found a link that took me to my wedding/engagement/bridal session (fun to reminisce)
• Brooke Maxey, the volleyball player

Image search

• I found a picture of my husband and I 
• I found my work ID photo from their website
• I found several of my wedding pictures
• A lot of Brooke Maxey, the volleyball player

Video search

• I found footage of volleyball games

From my results, I found it a little shocking that I did not find more links to myself. I remember when I first became a teacher, I caught students Google searching my name all the time. I believe it was my first year of teaching, about half way through the first semester, a student found my name and my phone number posted online. I was horrified thinking, oh my goodness, what am I going to do now? They found my information from a Facebook link. The page was for someone who had lost their phone and asked everyone to post their numbers on the page. I told my students that if they looked at the date, the post was 3 years old, they would see it was a long time ago and I explained it was an older number. I have no idea how I came up with that little white lie by the skin of my pants, but it worked! I never received a phone call from a student. From that point on, I was very cautious of what went online. 

I have done searches of myself in previous years to see what students could find on me and I never found anything that I wouldn't be proud of. I guess I consider myself lucky because I grew up in a transitional stage of technology and I was really involved in instant messaging (back when AOL dial-up was cool) and text messaging. Also, I was a littler terrified of my Dad because he was strict on what I could do on the computer. I do like that when I search for myself, I see a lot of professional items such as; my blog posts from Gallery Furniture, Graduate School blog for my classes, my professional information on my student organization website because I am a board member, and my work information on my school website. I say I am an active person with technology, I am just cautious on what I put online. I have always been terrified to post that I am leaving on vacation for a week and I come home to a burglarized house or even someone stalking me. I guess I have watched too many Life Time movies haha.