Note taking, and content curation, and Apps OH MY

This week in class everyone had to find an app related to their major and have our first App Smackdown. Some of the apps were pretty awesome like Adobe Catch, kahoot, socrative, and quiz up just to name a few. It was a quick and easy way to learn about new apps or even apps we already had but had no idea there was much more to them. My mind was blown by Evernote it is everything you need for note taking, you can audio record, embed links and photos, you can even search for a word that was in a photo!! You can scan as a PDF and even upload, and you can take picture of slides and make a notebook from it.

In the Connected educator Chapter 2 was all about developing a connected learning model. The new method for this is called connected learning communities it gives the teacher the benefit of being connected online as well as offline, There are 3 approaches to professional development which is local community(face-to-face connections), global network(individually chosen), and bonded community( global group that need connections more in depth than a PLN).Connected learning communities let parents, teachers, professional experts,etc make a thinking group to decide what is best for the children in this quick paced moving technology future. A big thing is they need to be big on diversity since a lot of students ideas stem from different cultures and ideas. #connectedlearner

19 practical Evernote tips, this article basically give you the ins and outs of Evernote adding to what i went over before. You can snap pictures of list, slides, even homework and will be able to find it easy and also edit and add anything you need to. You can even tag books you want to read just take a picture of the cover and of course save any of your work or even your kids drawings, you can even make your own to do list. You can do group work and share quite easily and if you cant get to your computer or your handwriting looks like chicken scratch you can type or text your assignment. Whats really cool is you can send messages or notes directly to your evernote app and can even label pictures and save them too. 

Simplifying Evernote also went in the direction of the 19 tips, it goes into how to do short term storage and long term storage. Of course it goes over how you can search by words from a photo and how you can sort and organize your display. 

Pocket now aids those with Dyslexia with a new font that helps people who suffer from it not be confused by the letters. I thought this was great since I am actually dyslexic when it comes to numbers so this a huge step for the app users. Since Pocket is all about reading this will help their readers who are dyslexic still enjoy their articles and have a much easier time reading. It gives all users support for the font Dyslexie, which is designed to create subtle changes in character structure to prevent confusion between letters that look similar.

Footprints on the internet

     This week in class we went over digital footprints ( the kind that are pretty scary). The footprints are basically trails on what is left on phones, text messages, and of course social media. We talked about the tool Teaching Privacy, which basically lets people find your locations through your social media like instagram and twitter #howcreepy. It even includes a chart showing what places your posting from often and at what times of the day. Stalkers have a much easier time than they did 10 years ago, we have to be conscious of the things we do and post you never know whose following you. Our digital footprints are how we are being searched especially when it comes to jobs, 

      The perfect follow up from our class lesson came from 11 Tips for Students to Manage Their Digital Footprints. Since its the trail of everything you do online the tips are actually quite helpful so you don't leave something out there you wouldn't want just anyone to find, It is important you always use your privacy settings and do not over share on your social media. You do not need a million emails keep track and manage the ones you do have, and its good to have a secondary email. Monitor the accounts you actively use and always delete the accounts you don't use anymore. Google yourself sometimes the scariest thing to do, and use your tools to manage your digital footprints. 

     Chapter 1 goes into detail about curation tools such as Symbaloo, Diigo, and Educlipper. Symbaloo provides a consise layout of icons that provide ine-click access to your favorite sites (page 4). Within symbaloo you have a webmix and basically has a bunch of tiles you click an empty one and can add the website of your choice. Diigo you can highlight, comment and add notes which is popular with educators, it works best as a social bookmarker. Educlipper was deigned for the k-12 grades this is why teachers have plenty of control when it comes to students networks an how open and closed they are.

Although I was out sick last week we had a guest speaker via Google Hangout which was Cameron Brenchley. He worked in the White House and operated the twitter account for them which you have to admit is pretty cool. He is now the Vice President at the company Collaborative Communications Group. He was able to answer my question on basically how much pressure was he under and what was the punishment for messed up tweets. He said in the White House the tweets went through a whole line of people before it was even published so it was easy to catch mistakes.

     There are plenty of negatives in the social media outlets facebook is one of the most common used.Your photos could be used in advertisements without you even knowing, well technically it is all in the fine print (that no one reads).Talk about invasion of privacy, they use your name and phone number to see what other sites you’ve been searching on. This way they can be more specific in what ads they want to send your way.  The article 5 Ways Facebook Owns You had some serious eye opening information the worst was a dead girls photo being used on an ad after her death.

     Oversharing on social media has become an epidemic in my eyes, takes a picture post location, Oh having drinks with friends tags the bar, people do not realize how dangerous this is because its just another social norm. Think twice about what you post gives you an insight and what is too much and what can help you, like always checking your privacy settings.  It can set you up for identity theft to even getting robbed and the only one to blame is your fingers for posting it all over your social media and making that info available to everyone on there. What you post can cost you your job and friends if your careless, and scams are never ending but reporting them helps keep your important information safer.

For the love of all things GOOGLE

       When I walked into my class Wednesday night I honestly didn't expect to learn so much about Google. I literally walked out of there mind blown and completely dumbfounded, because I use Google multiple times a day.  I hope everyone will learn something new by the time you'v finished reading this.

This goes out to all the students who have spent countless hours at their school library trying to find the books they need for research, Google has made it effortless to get any book you need in your school library. https://scholar.google.com/ is the site for you and it is very easy to navigate through. Just go to the setting than library links and find your school and search your heart away. Only thing is you have to be at your school library to access the books.

       Google can give you many things, such as a scientific calculator, check flights, and even movie times! You can go on google docs add quotes and even have google cite your work instantly, I know this would have saved me so much time if I would have known this sooner. You can even search for articles from 1 specific site and say you want sites similar to (example) history.com it will find sites close to it! #amazing.  You can even create surveys, forms, drawings, and maps. 

       

       I decided to read an article about google hangouts since its the most I use from google.Google hangout article is all about ways to utilizing hangouts to create and connect on there. They used the video chat aspect to have chats and also do interviews through hangouts. You can hold meetings especially if everyone is scattered about and can't be in the same room, and also can offer assessment feedback online. What i found interesting was that it would make for a really great customer support on any product and you can host a launch party too, a great way to expand your product simple, quick, and effortless. I found that the 2 most helpful are students who live far from school or cant make it to class can chat with their professor with online hours and perform presentations wherever you have your computer or laptop.

       I loved reading the article "How I learned to say, Hi Google docs, Goodbye MS word," because I am switching over to google docs. With all the things I learned in class about the endless wonders of google docs how could I not be sold on giving up MS word. Of course the author gave props to MS word for being reliable and having great features( even though they didn't use all of them). At first they were not sold on Google since he wasn't satisfied but once all the updates were done it turned into a whole different story. He liked the fact that it was simple, free and did not confuse you and you have the added bonus of the cloud, which required no download.   hello google docs, goodbye MS word

       Quick sheet for Google Drive, this article gives you pictures and step by step instructions on how to navigate through google drive. It is literally like the Google Drive for dummies guide, starting from how to upload files to how to sort your files. This is worth taking a look into especially if you have never used drive before. You don't have to take my word for it but I am sure if you click on the link you'll have everything you need to make your way through drive like a pro on your first time.
       

Who I am, PLN, and blog advice

Hello everyone,

       I'm Stephanie Sanabria, a junior here at Stockton University. I am a transfer student from Middlesex County College, where I graduated with high honors with my Associates degree. I am a mother of 2, I have a 4 year old son and a 5 month old daughter. I have interned with the Medical Examiners office and the Prosecutor's office as well. My major Criminal Justice with a concentration in Forensics. The career I want to get into is the Death Scene Investigation unit.

       In chapter 6 it is all about personal learning networks and designing your own web community. This chapter really opened my mind I had no idea a note taking software even existed (evernote). I was very confused about how to set up a PLN let alone what it even was. Chapter 6 cleared up questions ranging from who to follow, how to follow networks to create design your own community, even how you should go about finding well-respected followers. Four main roles for building a community are linking, lurking,learning, and leading according to David Lee. A PLN is the "outboard brain" (page 107) in the results of the connections in that specific network.
(The Connected Educator:Learning and leading in a digital age)

        In the article "Utilizing Twitter List," a statement from Bill Ferriter was used by the author. The statement was about how even though following 200 followers and being bombarded with information it can be hectic but still beneficial. The author separated who she followed by placing them into groups. Also if you wanted to follow only people in a certain group you could just subscribe to them. Basically you are creating you own PLNs within Twitter. http://principalj.blogspot.com/2012/07/utilizing-twitter-lists.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A%20ReflectionsFromAnElementarySchoolPrincipal%20%28Reflections%20from%20an%20Elementary%20School%20Principal%29

         "A Great Twitter Cheat Sheet for Teachers," the Twitter cheat sheet starts off by giving you acronyms for the basic Twitter vocab you'll need to understand. Some of the key terms you need to know are tweets, RT (retweet), DM (direct message), and it gives the explanations as well. They go into the significance of hashtags and how the can help you find the followers of a certain group such as #preschool or #freshman. They also give you information about Hootsuite and Tweetdeck for advanced users and it does into how the work and what they are used for.
http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2012/12/a-great-twitter-cheat-sheet-for-teachers.html


          "10 Blogging Blunders to Avoid," wrapped up in a short an sweet way is all the things NOT to do while blogging. Like making sure you use correct grammar and your spelling is always checked . Blogs need to have something to look at besides just words, and it needs to have an attractive appeal and presentation and do NOT hashtag a bunch of other articles. Making sure you use social media to make it easier and better for you and the others reading also never responding to comments is big NO NO unless you do not want to continue with blogging. The article also goes into confusing hashtags and categories, this will make it very hard for the ready to follow if they are not leading to the correct group.
http://wallblog.co.uk/2012/07/27/10-blogging-blunders-to-avoid/