The Techie School Teacher

 Final Reflection and Vanity Search 2.0 As a reflection to see what I have learned the past two weeks, I conducted a second "vanity search" to see my digital footprint.  My YouTube comments and recent presentations on YouTube showed up, emphasizing the importance of knowing that any comments you type on a site can show up anywhere!  I was unable to find my Articulate Rise course link, Canvas course, Google Account and Padlet but I know they are still there! The most surprising thing was one of the first images that popped up was the photo I use for my digital and paper resume.  This was quite surprising as I did not realize I had a photo that was that public.  This would be a good activity to show students how what they post is more easily found than what they think.  I do like that my digital footprint, while public, leans towards my professional rather than my personal life.  I will continue to curate and add to my professional portfol...

The Changing Nature of Web 2.0 Tools   After exploring different Web 2.0 tools the last few weeks, I began to reflect on how to keep up with the ever changing nature of technology, and how difficult it is to stay up to date.  It is so easy to get attached to a royalty free image database, interactive whiteboard, or digital student presentation tool, without realizing there is a newer, more popular version available in the past year.  I find the best way to stay up to date is to converse with colleagues and fellow educators, either in person or online, to find out what web tools people are using and enjoying.  I often get great ideas from seeing what people post and host on their classroom websites for others to see.  Even something as simple as the popular, visually appealing, Bitmoji classrooms, I never would have thought of if I hadn't seen so many great examples of.  Even reviewing my fellow classmates blogs has made me see how limited this particular bl...

 Social Bookmarking My Web 2.0 exploration continues this week with a dive into a Chrome Extension titled Diigo.  The extension allows you to bookmark sites as you explore them and stores them in the Diigo site itself.  This is nice as you don't have to login to your own Google account to access your bookmarks.  As my boyfriend and I sometimes borrow each other's computers this would be a useful feature.  It also lets you highlight and add sticky notes and saves them for you in the bookmarked site in your library (on the Diigo site).  This may not seem that useful, but for e-reading and researching this could make it a lot easier if you have a big project and get interrupted or need to stop for a day.  This also might be a useful tool for students who are reading online.   Another feature of Diigo was the "groups" feature where you could share websites or pages with a group of similar interest.  Although I enjoyed reading the shared post...