10 Tools You Can Use in Your Classroom:

1. ChartGizmo: This tool allows you to create charts for websites, blogs, and other social interactions. You may use this tool for visualizing finances, scientific data, test scores, and many other types of raw data.The following diagram types are available: Pie chart, Bar graph, Line graph, Ring chart, 3D Pie chart, 3D Bar graph, 3D Line graph, Candle, Scatter-plot, and Time-Series. You can also import data from an excel spreadsheet. You can use this in your classroom by creating your own graph for tests or assignments. You can also assign your students to create their own while doing a research project, teaching them how to create a graph with technology, or to show data averages and scores of the class on tests or assignments. 
   
2. Animoto: Animoto allows you to customize your presentation. You can pick a song, style, and then add videos, pictures, and text. Most people use this for family photos, businesses, birthdays, and many other things. Educators can use this to show a create way to present information to others. Students may use this when creating a presentation for class, It allows the student to learn a new technological way to get information across. Maybe have them create an all about me presentation for the first week of class.
   
3. Haiku Learning: Haiku Learning allows you to create a classroom page for online learning around this content. You can embed content such as a YouTube video, GoogleDocs, and other websites. You can also create online assignments for students to log-in and complete. This is great for schools, like Arkadelphia High School, that requires every student to have a computer for classes. You can create a classroom page for your students, where they can complete test, assignments, and see their grades after each task is completed. You can use any google app with this platform.
   
4. InfoPlease: InfoPlease is a research tool. It allows students to cover many different topics such as people, government, science, and other top topics. It includes a calculator, spelling checker, periodic table, and other common tools students are using in the classroom environment. This is a great website for students to use to research topics for projects. They can use encyclopedias, dictionaries, a thesaurus, an atlas, and other books.
   
5. QuizRevolution: This website allows you to create your own quiz or survey. You can add content and customize your own information. It can be on any topic to help keep the audience engaged. Teachers can use this resource for one question polls or quizzes. They may use this for bell-work or to answer a question about a story that they read for an assignment. It may also provide feedback from the students on how hard they think the material is.
   
6. Page Flip-Flap: You can transform any document (word, pdf, movie/video) into an interactive flip-book. After you create one, you will receive an email with the URL Link or your flip-book. It's free to use, and it allows you to share it to any website. This is great for teachers who give out online assignments, even college professors. They can create from their document a flip-book for students to use. It allows them to be more interactive with the material, and it conserves printing out a lot of paper for everyone. 
   
7. Tagul: Tagul allows you to create a free web-cloud. It is like Wordle, and allows you to customize it to any shape possible. When you click on the words, it searches it with google and creates a link. This is great for teachers. They can have their students create one after a project, and the words can take them to the websites they used to complete the assignment. It's an alternate works cited page that is interactive online. 
   
8. Podomatic: This internet tool allows you to combine photos and audio into a video or presentation. You do have to create an account, but it saves all of your work to go back and review. It's free, and anyone can use it. This can be use for technology projects. When I was in school, in our senior only class, they were to create a senior slide-show and present it to their class. They had to incorporate photos of whatever they chose, (mostly themselves, family and friends), and add music that goes with the photos. It teacher them to cut music and collaborate their ideas. 
   
9. DivShare: DivShare is a media delivery system that allows you to upload documents, save, and share them. You can keep up to 5 gigs online. You are able to store videos, photos, music, and document files. Students can upload their work to this website if they don't have a flash-drive on hand. It allows their documents to be saved, and they can log-in on another computer to complete the work and access what they have so far.
   
10. StoryMash: StoryMash is the future of collaborative fiction. It is for writers, readers, and anyone interested in creative writing. You can view others work and give feedback. Teachers can use this in writing or English classes. They can have students make accounts. While working on papers, students can peer review each others work and take the feedback to improve on the task at hand. It allows for interaction with peers and helps each other teach what they know.
    

How has social media impacted your life?

Negative Effects of Social Media 

While reading this article, I found two of the negative impacts to be really true: 

• It might make you spend money.
• It alters your appetite. 

Both of these have impacted my life. As a huge online shopper, I tend to follow multiple boutiques and makeup websites for deals. Every time I see new clothing in stock or there's a huge sale somewhere, I tend to browse around online and ultimately buy something new. Do I really need what I put in the shopping cart? Most of the time, no. It has turned me into an impulse buyer and I don't need that stress in my life. On Instagram, people post almost everything. Especially FOOD! It drives me insane to see so much food late at night. It turns into eating junk food and baking cooks with my friend Jamie at 2 am. ALWAYS! Eating so late has caused so much weight gain, but I just don't have time to work out. In order to stop this from happening, I only log on one day a week at most. That way I'm not running to Wal-Mart to get cookie dough late at night. 

Impacts of Social Media

Social Media has displayed impacts on different people all over the world. Everyone is affected by it. Whether its blogger, YouTube, Facebook, or Pinterest, you take part in at least one social media website. Pinterest is my favorite. There's no negative effects that this article talks about, such as cyber bullying, sexual harassment, impact on privacy, or even politics. Most people tend to use social media to stay in contact with distant family, friends, or they may have it for their job. You never tend to think about how teenagers act on social media; nor do they think about the consequences it could have on their future. I said Pinterest is my favorite for a reason. You don't have to post, nothing negative pops up (at least not on mine), and you can take a peek into other people's interest as they can yours. With that being said, we should be followers of each other on there. :)

My Pinterest Account

My name is Brianna Elaine McDonald. I was born in Texarkana, Texas, but I have lived my entire life in Stamps, Arkansas, My parents are divorced, so my immediate family includes my mother, a younger brother, and myself. I enjoy spending my free time hanging out with friends, but it mostly ends up being on YouTube, Pinterest, or playing video games on my iPad.

I am currently a junior middle school education major, and my goal is to become a math teacher upon completion of my degree. After a few years in the education field, I plan to attend Henderson again to obtain a masters in curriculum instruction.

When I first attended Henderson, I was not an education major. My goal was to work with deaf children as an audiologist/ speech pathologist. The summer after my freshman year changed my goal in life. I received to opportunity to work the whole summer with a group of children. We did several activities, but it was mostly educational work to help them advance in the next school year. After spending time bonding with the children and teaching them new things, I started to think how would my life be as an educator. EVERYONE in my family is in education, so why not follow their footsteps?

I am starting a blog to not only talk about my experiences through college, but to offer tips and ideas to help new students get adjusted to "college life". There are many things I wish I had figured out, even at the beginning of my sophomore year to make my junior year even better. Maybe someone else can benefit from my experiences to help make their own more enjoyable. I have met some amazing people along the way and I couldn't get through the rest of my time here at Henderson without them.