~Thing #8~

I used my friend Kyle Sipple's Flickr to create a .gif using Gickr. He takes the most gorgeous landscape pictures and lives in Utah. You should really check him out!

Flickr mashups could be used to help students get more creative and help them see that although it is a culmination of pictures, there is still so much more you can do with them. As an English teacher, I could tell them to use the .gif making Flickr tool to create a .gif of images that coincide with whatever story we're watching. It will help apply knowledge and make them think outside of the box.

When I think about sharing photos online, I truly think it's a great tool to publish yourself and have many people exposed to your pictures. However, this can also cause a problem because at the same time it gives everyone the power to do what they please with you photo. Even now with screen capturing tools, no photo is safe from not being downloaded. Even if a website disables left clicking or for example, a Flickr uses turns off the download feature, someone can still screen capture the image that they want and re-upload it elsewhere as their own.

The same applied to personal pictures. Once something has hit the web, it will most likely never go away. Any extensive research can find the photo once again.

~Thing #7~

I went with option B for my thing #7. I have used Flickr for a long time because photography has been a business for me for about three years now. I've always been really interested in photography and have taken pictures for a long time, but only within the last few years did I make photography a professional business for me.

I haven't been able to take many pictures recently, but this is one of the more recent favorite photos that I've taken:

Mike Muse, Amuse

You can click on it to enlarge the photo to take a better look if you'd like. I took this photo of the band Amuse at the Hoosier Dome in Indianapolis, Indiana. The bass guitarist and also one of the vocals, Mike Muse, is the focus in this picture and in the background is their drummer Weston Jordan. The band's name is Amuse and plays classic pop-punk music. You can find their music here.

I personally don't use Flickr for my photos because I prefer to upload them to my company's personal website, 9:29 P.M.

I don't think I will use Flickr because ever since they let Yahoo buy them out, their website has become cluttered and unorganized, and is not as minimalistic and clean as it used to be. It's great for other types of photography, but as far as band, concert, and promo photography, it falls short. I would rather my students learn to easily create a website and upload their photos through there than to use Flickr. However, if they are in need of photos that they haven't taken, I will encourage them to use Flickr because it easily sets the boundaries up between fair-use photos and copyrighted photos that the artist would rather not let anyone use for free.

The only other photo hosting service that is not considered social media that I've used is Photobucket. I really don't like photo bucket because once your personal file is full, the image, if posted on another website, immediately disappears and instead in place shows a Photobucket image saying there is no more space to host the photo.

~Thing #6~

Soundation

I chose Soundation because it gives the students a chance to freely create any sound they want with a selection of free samples to remix.
I love that it comes with free sounds and is fairly easy to use. I dislike that you need to sign up with the website in order to use it, but many websites are tied to log-in's so it seems unavoidable.

One of Soundation's useful features is it encourages Google Hangouts. If a student's interest is piqued in this website, they can always go home and use Google Hangouts to learn more about creating music. There are so many free softwares that they could really delve deep into expanding their mind by creating sounds that are pleasing to them.

The reason I chose this website despite being an English teacher, is that I greatly support the scientific findings that music helps enhance learning. Even if my students aren't particularly interested in music, using some class time every couple of weeks to create a short instrumental is a good time to expand the creativity of the mind and open it up and give it a rest.

~Thing #5~

While I agree that certain technologies should be introduced to the classroom, I don't fully agree that Web 2.0 is the future of education. While changing and integrating technology in a classroom is inevitable, completely relying on it is a mistake. Someone that hand-write's their notes are more likely to memorize a fact faster than someone that types it out, and with so much information out there, the line between facts and opinions become blurred.

School 2.0 to me means integrating certain technologies into the classroom. For example, I love the use of the Smart Board in class, and I think things like YouTube, Tumblr, and other blogging sites can be very helpful in class. However, many hours of the general adolescent's day is enveloped in if not a laptop, then their computer, and I believe physical social interaction should be encouraged at school more than integrating technology.

For schools of the future, students will have better ways of accessing information and sharing information. They will also get many more viewpoints of a subject and learn new ways to do math or faster ways to learn science. On the flip side, other aspects of a child's education may be hindered, considering how even on my Mac now I don't have to be too tedious of how I type because it automatically corrects me.

~Thing #4~

Commenting on other blogs is a quintessential thing to do to create a community and receive insight. When people express their inner thoughts on any subject, they usually like to hear or read some personal insight from other people that share the same passion, problem, or career as they do. Nobody likes feeling alone on an idea no matter how original and unique someone likes to be. Once you interact with others, it opens the door and encourages other to interact with you. It's sort of like being in public at a waiting room or on the first day of class. Everyone will sit quietly and observe others, and it takes the brave voice to speak up and say something before conversations start and a sense of community is created. Through this is how relationships and friendships are formed.

I think it's really important to encourage commenting on your blog. Ending with a question and inviting people to comment are truly two key steps to have more people comment on your blog. Without those, it is unlikely that someone will feel the need to leave a comment.

Mr. Braem's 23 Things

Miss Queener's 23 Things

Esther's 23 Things

Ms. Nicole's 23 Things

23 Things

CoryCopeland.Net

From Elsewear

I selected the first five blogs because they are my classmates's blogs. They are all writing on the same 23 things that I am, and it is interesting to see their points of views and inner monologue for each of the "things". The last two blogs are blogs that I frequent. Cory Copeland is a guy that speaks about his faith and his experiences. I really like what he has to say most of the time and he writes about things that are very relatable. From Elsewear's blog is fashion inspiration and encourages people to be the future and create their own style. I am the video production manager and I love seeing what my friend Jami is grabbing inspiration from. It helps me create the video combining both her vision and mine.

On the first blog, I commented about another blog he mentioned. I honestly found it interesting and new. On the second blog, the writer mentioned an exercise on how to use blogs in the classroom, and I really liked the idea! On the third blog, the writer was slightly worried and hoping she was blogging right, and I simply assured her that her blog looks great. On the fourth blog, the writer was talking about where she was weak in the 7 habits of life long learning. I simply gave a little advice on how being positive can build confidence. On the 5th blog, I agreed that remembering to play and relax on vacations can be really hard for me too.

On the last two blogs, I simply left a comment about my personal insight of the subjects.

~Thing #3~

As a high school teacher, I could really use blogs in my future classroom. Not only is it an excellent way to keep students' work documented, but if they happen to continuously use their blog, it's a great way to keep up with them. Even more so, as a college professor, blogs would be a superb thing to use in my future classroom.

English is seemingly splitting itself between two separate mediums: the Internet and paper. Internet writing is similar to novel writing. Certain rules are not as important, and there are other fads on the Internet that could make or break your writing if you follow them or not. For example, a popular form of prose on the Internet right now is to completely ignore capitalizing proper nouns or the first words of your sentences.

Also, run-on sentences are used to express when someone is stressed out or trying to make a point. However, on paper, it is expected that you write properly and use all of the skills that English and grammar classes should teach. This split in writing can sometimes separate those from professionalism and un-professionalism.

~Thing #2~

As stated in Thing 1, I have a lot of experience with blogs. I started in about 2006 with MySpace, updating a small personal blog on my own personal page. That same year, I started another blog with LiveJournal. I kept up with these for about a year and moved on to BlogSpot. After keeping my BlogSpot for a while, I searched for even better blogging websites. That's when I happened upon WordPress and Tumblr. To this day, those are my favorite two blogging websites because of their vast possibilities in customizing and connecting with others.

My posting name is just my first and middle name. It's what I've gone by on the Internet since I began avidly using the Internet, and I'm a huge believer in branding if you want to make something of yourself. I chose my blog name because I aspire to be an English professor one day. It's a nerdy play on words: Prufrock is short for Alfred Prufrock. This name is from a poem by T.S. Elliot titled "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. I really love this poem because of how vividly T.S. Elliot described things, going from being very detailed to being vague. The rest of the title "prufRock And Roll" comes from my love of music, especially the rock genre.

Creating this blog was really easy once I figured out what I wanted my title of it to be. It was easy because I have former experience with BlogSpot and HTML overall.

I created my avatar to look like myself. I am a confident person and I like the way I look. It bothers me that our society prizes self-deprecating over self-confidence, and that's why I decided I wanted my avatar to look as similar to me as possible, style and all. I gave her a fringe because I've sported a fringe or some style of bangs since the beginning of high school. My avatar has on a baseball tee and tight jeans. This outfit is typical of comfort and generally of people that love music and the style resurfaced in the late 90's with the rise of pop punk, and that especially reflects my personality. Lastly, she has a dog because I absolutely love dogs and I figured accessorizing my avatar with a guitar looked too adolescent and un-professional.

~Thing #1~

Out of the seven and a half habits of lifelong learning, the easiest one for me is accepting responsibility for my own learning. Any time that I find something new and fascinating, I immediately delve deeper into the subject and learn everything about it that I can. I understand that if I want to learn about something and commit it to my memory, I must embark on my own journey to teach it to myself or find a mentor that can help me understand the subject better. I have always known since I was young that my learning is my responsibility.

One of the most difficult habits for me is beginning with the end in mind. I know my ultimate goal upon learning of a subject, however once I start, I quickly lose sight of my goal and get side-tracked easily. Without beginning with the end in mind, one suddenly starts losing the clear path that they should take. This causes a serious problem because I suddenly forget why I was learning about a certain subject in the first place. I think this habit is especially important in a classroom. In a classroom, the students need to understand why they are learning about this and how it affects them as individuals and how their knowledge affects the world. The students need to understand that they are learning for more than just a letter grade, and by beginning with the end in mind they will hopefully pursue learning fiercely, which in turn results in better grades.

Setting up this blog for me was really easy. I am very technology savvy and have used BlogSpot since 2007, before it was even connected with Google! I was actually excited that we would get to keep a blog for class because I think keeping a blog is very important: I have had over 10 types of blogs and I also keep a written journal. I love blogging because sometimes you even get incite and experiences from other people.